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THE COLLEGE STUDENT 
AND HIS PROBLEMS 



The Persona! Problem Series 



The College Student and his Problems, 
By James H. Canfield, LL.D. 

Mental Growth and Control. 

By Nathan Oppenheim, M.D. 

In Press. 

— • — 

Other volumes in preparation. 



^ 



THE COLLEGE STUDENT 



AND 



HIS PROBLEMS 



BY 



JAMES HULME CANFIELD 

Librarian of Columbia University 

Formerly Chancellor of the University of Nebraska 

and President of Ohio State University 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1902 

All rights reserved 



7 2>^^ 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CCV CRESS, 
Two CuHES Heceived 

\m. 9 1902 

OopvwiQHT eWTRV 

CLASS d XXa l*«o. 
COPY S. 



COPTKIGHT, 1901, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Norbjootj ^res8 

J. S. Cushinjj & Co. — Berwick & Smith 

Norwood Mass U.S.A. 



For the Children 

Of My Educa.tiona.1 Sons and Daughters 

Whose Unfailing Confidence and Affectionate Regard 

Ha<ve been and still are 

The Inspiration and the Re<ward of Life 

These Pages ha've been Written 



PREFATORY NOTE 

Ceetain books of counsel, teaching young men 
and women how best to shape their ideals and 
their lives, played an honorable part in the litera- 
ture of the nineteenth century, particularly in 
America, where aspiring youth is eager to learn 
the secret of noble success. These books, so 
gratefully remembered by older men, have long 
since become powerless to aid a younger genera- 
tion, and their place has not yet been worthily 
filled. It is our intention to issue a short series 
of small volumes that shall fulfil the mission of 
the best of these obsolescent manuals. No one 
mind, no single experience, would suffice for such 
a task. Each special field, each special group of 
personal problems, must be treated separately. 
There is the problem of the body — how shall its 
mechanism be perfected and kept in repair; the 
problem of the mind — how shall its latent powers 
be wisely developed ; the problem of the spiritual 
nature — how shall it be best nurtured. Each is 



viii Prefatory Note 

to be treated by one who has given long-continued 
thought and effort to that particular subject. 
These are fundamental problems, which all young 
men and young women must consider. There 
are others that appeal to great classes of the 
community : the securing of an education when 
college is out of the question, the management 
of life at college, the choice of a profession — to 
mention no more — and each of these is also to 
be treated by men of special knowledge and 
experience. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 
December 1, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEB 
I. 


Why Go to College? . 






PAGE 

1 


11. 


The Choice of a College . 






22 


III. 


The Selection of a Course 






42 


IV. 


The Fateful First Year .. 






61 


V. 


Fraternities .... 






83 


VI. 


Athletics .... 






96 


VII. 


Other College Enterprises 






118 


VIII. 


Electives .... 






134 


IX.' 


The Choice of Life-Work . 






147 


X. 


A Few Last Words 






176 


APPENDIX: Expenses . 






191 



THE COLLEGE STUDENT 



Why Go to College? 

Between the covers of this book, my dear 
young fellow, you and I are to talk together 
about your college life and work, possibly much 
as your father and I talked together not so very 
many years ago. I am not at all unmindful of 
the fact that talk is cheap and that advice is 
often worth but little more than it costs — noth- 
ing. Somewhere Thoreau says that all advice is 
of little value because it is generally offered by 
men who are not in touch with their times, 
whose future is already quite behind them, who 
are out of sympathy with those seeking advice. 
It is entirely well known, also, that most people 
really desire approbation, though they may say 
that they are seeking advice. Between the pos- 
sibly slight practical value of advice, therefore, 
and the general unwillingness to accept it, the 

B 1 



2 The College Student and His Problems 

task of one offering the results of his experi- 
ence and observation is not an enviable one; 
and it is undoubtedly true that he generally has 
his labors for his pains. 

Moreover, the problems of life are to be solved 
by each person for himself; and each solution, 
if at all correct and satisfactory, will bear the 
distinct stamp of individuality. I may say vrhat 
I would do "if I were in your place," but the 
fact remains that if I were in your place I would 
surely do exactly what you are doing and what 
you will do. While there is much which may 
be gained by inquiry, while it pays in every 
sense of the word to keep your eyes and ears 
open, after all you must determine your own 
scheme of life. The experience of others is 
worth something : it is neither necessary nor de- 
sirable that you perpetually burn your fingers 
in the same fire that scorched the digits of your 
ancestors; yet your most helpful lessons will 
come from your own experience — even from 
your own mistakes. You must work out your 
own salvation, even with fear and trembling. 

You have finished your work at the public 
high school or the private^ academy; and you are^ 



Wh^ G-o to College? 3 

ready to enter upon some of the liberal courses 
in college, to take up technical training, or to 
begin work in the business world. The pre- 
sumption of this volume is that you will con- 
tinue your studies. But it is entirely proper 
to ask why you make this choice. You ought 
to be able to give a reason for your action, to 
explain your selection. Not every boy needs a 
college course, not every boy can master it, not 
every boy will be benefited by it. Not every 
boy has the definite purpose, the firm determina- 
tion, the intellectual grip and grit, the will-power, 
the self-mastery — such a constant and essential 
factor in all other mastery — necessary to secure 
advanced education and sound training, or to 
make a wise and efficient use of these after they 
have been secured. It is well to think of this, 
to give it most careful consideration, to be as 
sure of your ground as possible. But remem- 
ber, always, to give yourself the benefit of any 
doubt. Unless in some peculiar and unusual 
way you have positive and definite and conclu- 
sive assurance that it will be only a waste of 
time and effort to undertake a college course, 
enter some college at once. 



4 The College Student and His Problems 

A serious question sometimes arises here. 
Shall you enter college if you are obliged to 
borrow the money with which to meet your 
expenses ? I have a horror of debt of every 
description ; and I do not at all accept Mr. 
Greeley's dictum that debt is a good thing for 
a young man because it gives him something 
very definite to work for. But if you are even 
reasonably sure that you may profitably take a 
college course, there is no better undertaking 
for which to borrow money, nor is there any 
better investment of borrowed money — nothing 
which pays a larger interest or makes a more 
sure return. Borrowing should be most em- 
phatically a last resort, and you should borrow 
the least amount consistent with your necessary 
expenses, after taking careful account of what 
you can possibly earn during vacations and at 
other leisure hours. But if the choice must be 
made between entering upon life in the bonds 
of ignorance or of limited education, or in the 
bonds of debt, the latter is to be chosen — every 
time. Either condition is deplorable and danger- 
ous ; but there is far more hope of escape from 
the latter than from the former. 



Whi/ Go to College P 5 

But why should you go to college at all? 
What are you to gain by this ? What are you 
to lose without it? How is it to be helpful to 
you ? Exactly what is the advantage which you 
will have over the man who chooses to enter the 
business world at once and without further 
training ? 

It is entirely necessary to admit at the out- 
set that a large number of the men who are 
successful in either business or in the profes- 
sions or in public life — some, even in the world 
of letters — have not received a college training. 
As President Barnard once said ; " A mind is 
not moulded as an earthen vessel is fashioned by 
the hand of a potter. It moulds itself, by virtue 
of an inherent force which makes for symme- 
try or deformity according to the direction given 
it by consciousness and will. No lack of advan- 
tages will prevent a man from securing a valua- 
ble education, who is resolved to educate himself. 
Witness, for instance, a Benjamin Franklin, a 
Hugh Miller, a Michael Faraday, and an Abra- 
ham Lincoln." All these, however, are easily 
recognized as exceptional men. Some of them 
are successful in spite of a deficient education. 



6 The College Student and His Problems 

By extraordinary effort, continued through a 
long series of years, they have overcome all 
obstacles and have mastered all difficulties. 
Through much tribulation they have come at 
last into their kingdom, ^ — all the more theirs, 
and all the more valuable and valued, because 
of the struggle it has cost. They are entitled 
to great credit for the courage and energy and 
insistence with which the battle has been fought. 
But these men very generally bear the scars of 
the conflict ; rightly or wrongly, regret their 
earlier limitations ; and believe that they could 
have gone farther and could have accomplished 
more if they had enjoyed some of the edu- 
cational opportunities so easily within the reach 
of the average boy of to-day. Surely, because 
some of the hardy pioneers of an earlier day 
tramped into the West beside their slow-moving 
oxen, it is not desirable or necessary that we 
of to-day avoid the Empire Express. These 
successful non-collegians are always anxious that 
their sons shall enjoy all the advantages which 
higher education affords. Chauncey Depew has 
said that he has been intimately acquainted with 
hundreds of men who though wealthy were un- 



Wh^ ao to College f 7 

educated, and that he had never met one of 
them who did not feel in the presence of cul- 
tured people a certain sense of mortification which 
no money could pay for ; nor had he ever met 
one of them who was not prepared to sacrifice 
his entire fortune, if necessary, in order that his 
son should never feel that mortification. 

A few exceptional men are undoubtedly what 
they are because they were not trammelled by 
the work of a college. With most of us genius is 
little more than an infinite capacity for work ; 
but there are those who are "not as other 
men." To these the college course, necessarily 
more or less fixed and rigid and unbending, and 
the work of the class room and lecture room, 
necessarily adapted to the average mind, are 
positive hindrances. They are not born to work 
in harness, and the straps and buckles which 
enable the rest of us to pull a load are simply 
and unendurably galling to them. It is rare 
indeed, however, that a man may safely count 
himself in this class ; these exceptions to all 
general rules and conditions are so few in num- 
ber that they do not demand serious attention 
here. 



8 The College Student and His Problems 

There is another thought, in this connection. 
The greater number of these men of limited 
education are now at middle life, even if they 
have not passed this limit. This means that 
they have two quite definite advantages. In the 
first place, they came up in an age when college 
training was by no means as widespread, as well- 
nigh universal, as now. All forms of life were 
far more simple than now, and the mastery of 
the conditions of success was far less difficult 
than now. In the business world, markets were 
more restricted, competition was less keen, 
organization was less rigid, and the entire move- 
ment was more leisurely, — possibly with some- 
what more dignity and with somewhat less 
"hustle." In the professional world the changes 
have been fewer, as to the old-time callings ; but 
the newer professions were then almost unknown, 
and even the " big four " — Law, Medicine, the 
Ministry, Education — made no such demands 
upon their followers as are now deemed impera- 
tive. The second advantage is that these non- 
collegians have thus far been competing with 
their own kind, with men of similar training or 
lack of training. But the young men of to-day 



Why Go to College? 9 

will find all this changed when they reach 
middle life, — the most trying time for all men. 
Twenty-five years from now they must compete 
largely with college-bred men. They will find 
themselves trotting in quite another class, and 
they must meet the pace or be barred. The 
learned professions, so called, the technical call- 
ings, the world of literature, the avenues of pro- 
duction and of commerce, public life and service 
— all are now crowded with collegians, give pref- 
erence to collegians, offer peculiar opportunity 
and incentive to collegians. The college man 
is everywhere in evidence. The day of Mr. 
Greeley's contemptuous notice, " No college grad- 
uates or other horned cattle need apply," has 
passed. Just as the simpler life, easily mastered 
by the graduate of the people's college, the dis- 
trict school, developing into more complex con- 
ditions, demanded the training offered by the 
academy and the high school ; so we have already 
passed to the broader life, calling for higher educa- 
tion, both general and technical. As A. E. Win- 
ship puts it : " It is now certain that in every 
avenue of competition one must face elaborately 
trained and educated men and women. A boy 



10 The College Student and His Problems 

who played old-fashioned baseball would stand as 
good a chance in a modern football game under 
the new rules of the game, as a ' smart ' man 
untrained will stand in the near future, in any 
line of public activity." 

Every young man of normal temperament 
and natural ambition finds his thoughts and 
desires running out along three lines. First, 
naturally, he desires to live. By this is meant 
something more than mere existence. In this 
country almost any one can manage to exist. 
The exceptions are so rare that a case of failure 
through other than natural causes — sickness or 
accident — is at once noted in the daily press as 
so exceptional as to demand attention. A death 
by starvation — even one, in a population of 
seventy-five millions — calls for an associated 
press despatch with scare-heads. So easy of 
solution is the problem of mere existence that 
we are at times almost tempted to think that it 
is too easy ; that perhaps it would be better 
for us all if the Wandering Willies and the 
Counts Canoftomatovitch found it just a little 
more difficult to keep soul and body together. 
No normal young man, therefore, is ever very 



Wht/ Go to College f 11 

anxious over the prospect of his " getting a 
living." 

But you are demanding more than this, and 
rightly. You hope to have reasonable comfort 
of body : a body well fed, well clothed, well 
housed. Nothing extravagant may be in your 
mind ; but you desire food that will be whole- 
some and palatable and sufficient, clothing that 
will not only give comfort but will enable you 
to appear among your fellows without hesitation 
and without fear of comment of any sort, and a 
home of some sort which shall at least be more 
and better than the four walls of a hall bedroom 
in some semi-public boarding house. You wish 
to have your share of the pleasures and recreations 
of life. Books, magazines, the daily and weekly 
press : these must minister to your higher 
tastes. Some day you hope and expect to look 
across the table, level into the cool gray eyes of 
one who has gladly cast in her lot with you, 
who is to be a help-meet indeed. You desire 
to know something of true social life, of the 
delights of friendship. The enjoyment of travel 
must be yours ; the world must open to you in 
many ways. 



12 The College Student and His Prohlems 

And, second, you are hoping to become a man 
among men. You wish to size yourself up with 
your fellows, with no sense of inferiority of 
stature. You propose to touch elbows with 
others, to put shoulder to shoulder, to carry your 
share of the public burden, to prove yourself a 
worthy citizen. You hope that the time will come 
when your experience and your observation will 
count for something, when men will turn to you 
for advice and counsel, when they will desire 
to know your opinions before they enter upon 
some given undertaking, when your going and com- 
ing will be of some moment in the community, 
when possibly the public service will open to you, 
when your words will be quoted and your judg- 
ment will receive due deference. You are not 
at all willing to be a nonentity, to be unknown, 
to live in a back room on a back street, to have 
no one care whether you are at home or abroad, 
to have the community entirely indifferent to 
your existence, to be a cipher among the figures 
which go to make up the sum of life, an integer 
on the wrong side of the decimal point, or a minus 
quantity ; you are not willing to remain a human 
flint which never by any chance strikes fire. 



Why G-o to College? 13 

Lastly, you wish to accomplisli something 
which will endure. This thought may not come 
to you very often just now, and may be rather 
vague when it does come ; but it will grow upon 
you with advancing years. The saddest thought 
imaginable is that with death comes oblivion ; 
that all in which you have been interested, for 
which you have wrought, to which you have 
given yourself — your very self, that all this may 
come to an end when your eyes close in your 
last sleep ; that it has all been so very finite as 
to deserve no place whatever in the great infi- 
nite plan which is being worked out through the 
ages ; that, after all, you have built with hay and 
and straw and sticks and stubble ; that when 
your own eyes lose their lustre, there are no other 
eyes that are shining brighter because at some 
time you have looked into them with human 
sympathy and affectionate interest ; than when 
your hand is marble-cold, there is no hand which 
still feels the warmth of your grasp in that hour 
in which you brought new hope to one almost in 
despair ; that when your heart has ceased to beat, 
there is no heart throbbing with high aspiration 
and renewed courage because once you put your 



14 The College Student mid His Problems 

heart against it as friend to friend and brother 
to brother ; that not a single human being has 
found the world better, and the skies brighter, 
and the horizon wider, and the stars of God 
shining with clearer light, because you have 
lived and loved and served in your day. No 
one willingly chooses such a fate as this. The 
rather does every man desire the grateful and 
loving remembrance of his fellows, and strive to 
so live that many will keep his memory green. 

But these three longings of the human soul — 
for life, for influence and power and mastery, for 
ability to perpetuate its thoughts and purposes 
and to build that which abideth — these three 
cannot find satisfaction in a small and unintelli- 
gent and uncertain life. Only the mind which 
becomes public and large can ever enter into the 
highest joys of life. And only the mind which 
is early and thoroughly and wisely disciplined 
can possibly and surely hope to become public 
and large. As I have already admitted, you may 
secure this discipline outside the walls of a col- 
lege. Some men have done this, but the surest 
road is that trodden by hundreds and thousands 
during all the past — the college, rich in oppor- 



Wht/ ao to College? 15 

tunity, in association, in fellowship, in tradition, 
in all that is stimulating and helpful. Here you 
will find clearer judgment, a wider horizon, 
higher ideals of culture and of manhood than 
you have ever known before. All this will not 
come to you suddenly; it will grow with your 
growth. It will not come without effort ; you 
will get nothing at all if you simply stand at the 
foot of the ladder, with your mouth open, long- 
ing. But here as never before will you find 
incentive and opportunity combined. 

Do not for a moment understand me to say 
that the conditions at college are ideal. Often 
they are far otherwise, and of this we will talk 
more specifically by and by. But this much may 
be said without fear of contradiction : that no 
sincere, earnest, faithful student, taking a well- 
chosen course at an equally well-chosen college, 
ever regretted such action or thought his four 
years thrown away. No matter what the super- 
structure is to be, you will always be glad that 
you laid the foundation deep and broad and 
strong. 

I have been trying to tell you why you ought 
to go to college. It may help you in making 



16 The College Student and His Problems 

your decision to know that the best business 
men of to-day very generally favor the graduate, 
preferring him to the non-graduate — all other 
things being equal ; and look for more intelli- 
gent effort, a wider outlook, a firmer grasp, more 
rapid advancement than are possible to the aver- 
age man who has been denied the privilege of 
higher training. It is entirely true that the 
college-bred boy must begin at the bottom, and 
that at the outset he appears to have lost time, 
— wandering about among the dead languages 
and philosophy and the history of the past and 
fine-spun theories of the present, while the " other 
fellow " has mastered the elements of his business 
or calling, and is already well up the ladder. 
But the college man is destined to climb faster 
and higher. He does not reach the end of his 
tether nearly so soon as the " other fellow," and, 
all other things being equal, he soon masters the 
other fellow as being simply one of the incidents 
of the situation. It may interest you to know 
that about one per cent of the entire population 
of this country has received a higher education, 
yet this one per cent holds more than forty per 
cent of all the positions of confidence and trust 



Wh^ G-o to College? 17 

and profit which it is in the power of the Amer- 
ican people to grant. For some good reason, 
your fellow-citizens have thus officially and for- 
mally recorded their approval of the results of 
sound and advanced education. It is especially 
noteworthy in this connection that as these posi- 
tions rise in the scale of importance and emolu- 
ment — and it is entirely proper that you think 
of both phases of success — the per centum of 
college men increases. In hewing your way 
through life there is constant and ample proof of 
the truth of the old saying that an educated man 
has a sharp axe in his hand, while the uneducated 
man has a dull one. 

It may be well to remind you that in all tech- 
nical work the demand for well-trained men is 
now almost imperative. If you are to be at all 
successful as a mechanical engineer, as a civil en- 
gineer, as an electrical engineer, as a sanitary 
engineer, as an architect, and if through such 
callings, or through others like these, you are to 
advance to such positions as manager of some 
great commercial organization or president of 
some large undertaking in the field of produc- 
tion, you will find the courses in the schools of 



18 The College Student and His Problems 

applied science an absolute necessity. It is prac- 
tically impossible, now, to succeed without having 
made good use of such opportunities ; and cer- 
tainly it will be impossible twenty years from 
now, when it will be too late for you to make 
good any present neglect. It is hardly neces- 
sary to do more than actually examine the re- 
quirements of the schools of law, of medicine, of 
theology, to understand the change which has 
come in that direction, and the rapidity with 
which these institutions are beginning to base 
their own work on that which has earned the 
bachelor's degree. 

So I think I am quite warranted in believing 
that you are going to college. I hope you are 
really going^ and that you are not one of those 
who are sent. It is not pleasant to be put here 
or there, by other people, with no consultation of 
your own wishes. It will make all the difference 
possible if you are going of your own choice, will- 
ingly, gladly. The work which is done under 
compulsion is rarely very successful, and this is 
surely one reason why students fail. And I hope 
you are entering upon this new field with a high 
courage, born of an intelligent appreciation of the 



Whi/ G-o to College? 19 

fact that practically every condition of your col- 
lege life favors your success. The work of the 
institution is adapted to the average man. If 
you happen to be a little below the average in 
either ability or preparation or determination or 
will power, you will have to work a little harder 
in order to hold your own — but you can hold it, 
by faithful endeavor ; never fear about that. 
These five elemental and fundamental character- 
istics I hope you will develop and cultivate : — 
Sobriety of thought : as the very opposite of 
the only too general flippant temper of American 
life. The great questions of time and eternity 
are not to be regarded as of trifling importance. 
The problems of life are many and grave, and 
have taxed the wisdom and the strength of gen- 
erations of men who have been both wise and 
strong ; and you are not to dismiss them with 
some smart remark, or with a sneer. It is easy 
to be " funny " at tlie expense of serious things, 
but it is destructive of all mental wholesomeness 
to be so. I am not suggesting that you become 
old beyond your years, but that you treat weighty 
matters with a temper and attention befitting 
their importance. 



20 The College Student and His Problems 

Simplicity of life : for only so will you, as 
either student or graduate, find time for real life, 
the life about which we have been already talking 
together. The constant tendency, in college and 
out, seems to be toward complexity, toward a vast 
aggregation of the unnecessary even if not of the 
positively undesirable, toward customs and prec- 
edents and manners which eat the heart out of 
the day before the real day's work is well begun, 
which demand hours at night which were far 
better given to earnest thought and strenuous 
endeavor. 

Absolute integrity : without which one cheats 
himself of far more than he cheats the world, 
easily and entirely defeats the very end of his 
college life, and runs swiftly and surely into 
entanglement and confusion and dire disaster. 

Courage : since th^ determined will, the indom- 
itable temper, the " I will it " of a born autocrat, 
the self-mastery which must precede all other 
mastery — these and more are possible only to 
the brave soul. 

Strength : which is the sympathetic and intel- 
ligent development and the successful coordina- 
tion of all the powers of mind, body, and spirit ; 



Why G-o to College? 21 

and without this development and coordination 
no man is well educated or well trained, nor can 
he possibly hope to secure the broadest and best 
education or the soundest training. 

But all this means simply that you will under- 
take your work in the fear of God, which is the 
beginning of all wisdom ; and will ground your 
work on righteousness of life, which is the only 
sure and ever sure foundation. Taking up your 
new life in this spirit, you need have neither 
thought nor fear of failure. 



II 

The Choice of a College 

It is settled, then, that you are going to 
college. The next and very natural question 
is, what college ? 

If your father is a college-bred man, you will 
almost instinctively turn to his alma mater. You 
have often talked of this, while you were at 
your preparatory work ; have talked of it so 
much that you regard the question as practi- 
cally settled. Naturally enough — since with 
this college you are already acquainted, you 
know its traditions and precedents, you have 
caught something of its spirit. Your father 
would like to have you tread the paths with 
which his feet were once so familiar ; would like 
to know that you are reviving his fame in the 
old literary society (generally with some classic 
name); enjoys the thought of your singing the 
old songs in the one-time chorus or musical 

22 



The Choice of a College 23 

union ; is glad to know that his interest in 
athletics is to be renewed by having you on 
the college team ; and very generally favors your 
becoming one of his fellow alumni. Possibly 
he has already taken you down or up to a com- 
mencement, has introduced you to the president 
and to some of the older members of the faculty, 
has had you dine with him at the house of his 
fraternity, has shown you his old room in the 
still older dormitory, and has tramped with you 
for a whole afternoon — over the hills and far 
away, but with the college town ever in sight. 
He will not understand why you even think of 
going elsewhere ; possibly he will object to your 
going elsewhere. If he is loyal to the crimson 
of Harvard, he surely will not wish you to en- 
list with the sons of Eli ; if he has come from 
under the moulding hand of Mark Hopkins, he 
will be heartbroken to have you go to Amherst ; 
if he wears the blue and white of Columbia, he 
can see nothing good in the small " fresh-water " 
colleges of the interior ; and so on to the end 
of the chapter. 

Now, with some exceptions, it is not going to 
do you serious harm to go to your father's col- 



24 The College Student and His Problems 

lege. There is a very decided advantage in his 
interest in all this, and in your interest in it, 
and in a predetermined interest of the college 
in you. These relations are mutual, and mutu- 
ally helpful and beneficial. It is entirely natural 
to give all these conditions very full weight as 
reasons for your choice. Yet, after all, it may 
be very wise for you to decide squarely against 
your father's alma mater. It is certainly well 
worth your while to give this matter most seri- 
ous consideration. 

Remember that the college is not an end but 
a means to an end. You are not going to col- 
lege simply because it is the fashion to do so in 
your segment of the social world, or because your 
father went, or for any similar or similarly in- 
adequate reason. You are going to college for 
a very definite purpose, to secure a very defi- 
nite result. You wish to come into some effi- 
cient knowledge of yourself, to secure a reasonable 
mastery of your powers, to change the rather 
filmy and nebulous and gelatinous mass called 
your brain into something with clearness of out- 
line and firmness of grasp, to substitute a steady 
and powerful mental stride for a rather sham- 



The Choice of a College 25 

bling mental gait, to put grip and grit in place 
of mental flabbiness, and to lay well either the 
general or the special foundation for the activi- 
ties of later life. Now your father's college 
may be just the place where you can accomplish 
all this, and then again it may not be the place 
at all ; and it is proper and right that you in- 
quire into this very closely. Almost no part 
of our American life has changed more, or more 
rapidly, or more helpfully, during the last twenty- 
five years — since your father left college — than 
education. In purpose and plan, in end and 
means, in theory and methods, in the general 
curricula and in all the details of the work, 
there has been almost a revolution. There have 
been some excesses, as is true of all revolutions ; 
but the advance has been wonderful and admir- 
able. It would be difficult to express mathemati- 
cally, by ratios or proportions or per cents, the 
gains which have been made. You ought to 
have the benefit of all this ; and it is only wise, 
therefore, that you question closely, and even 
sharply, before you reach a final conclusion. 

Speaking in general terms : first, you should 
connect yourself with a well-known and pros- 



2G The College Student and His Frohlems 

perous institution ; for much tlie same reason 
that you seek connection with a strong business 
house or professional firm. Otherwise it may 
happen that, when you mention your college 
hereafter, you will necessarily make explanation 
— which is rather humiliating to say the least ; 
you will find yourself carrying the college instead 
of the college carrying you. If you are seeking 
a business position, you know the value of a 
strong reference. There are some individuals, 
and some firms, whose names carry great weight. 
An indorsement from them is peculiarly help- 
ful, may easily be the open sesame to the very 
field which you most desire to occupy, the wide 
door to the broad and beaten pathway to suc- 
cess. This is not the result of the name alone, 
in and of itself ; the peculiar value lies in the 
fact that the part of the business world in which 
you are interested and which you desire to have 
interested in you, believes that one who has 
been in touch with such a firm, or one who has 
acquitted himself acceptably to such an indivi- 
dual, has had large opportunity, has proved him- 
self worthy of it, and has profited by it. This 
is precisely why it gives a man definite position 



The Choice of a College 27 

and immediate standing to be able to say, "I 
am a Columbia man," or a "Yale man," or a 
" Harvard man," or a man bearing the approval 
of any one of several other great institutions. 
And this again is why it is really of very 
little assistance to name any one of the hundreds 
of still other colleges and so-called colleges ; for 
the only answer, if any, will be either, " That's 
a rather feeble institution, is it not ? " or, 
"Where is that? I never heard of it before." 

Remember that the objection to your attend- 
ing such a college is not simply that its name 
will not be of assistance to you after graduation. 
The objection lies in the cause of this fact. For 
the cDllege will be known, and its diploma will 
be honored, if its curriculum, its equipment, its 
faculty, and its methods, are strong enough to 
add positive strength to your character and to 
quicken your development. The fact that it is not 
known, or is not widely known, or is not favorably 
known, ought to make you pause and ponder 
before casting in with it your fortunes and your 
future. 

The college of your choice ought to be prosper- 
ous, because the demands of modern education 



28 The College Student and His Problems 

are great. The best men cost money, and a great 
deal of money ; an adequate library costs money ; 
up-to-date laboratories cost money ; and all these 
are desirable and necessary if the very best results 
are to be secured. High-grade work of any kind 
is expensive. You can build a very presentable 
house with " seconds " in the way of material, 
and with plenty of paint and putty by way of 
disguise ; but the first year of stress and strain 
makes great gaps in it, and shows that, cheap 
as it is, it is really very dear — since it has failed 
in its purpose, and the time and labor which have 
been spent upon it have been practically thrown 
away. So it is with some so-called education. 
But the illustration fails in one important point. 
It is possible to repair and rebuild the house ; 
but you can rarely make good your loss of sound 
training. You have but one real opportunity 
for education, and that is during the formative 
period, while the vigor and freshness of youth 
are still upon you, and before the cares and 
anxieties of this world press so heavily as to pre- 
clude attention to much other than themselves. 
It is a frightful mistake, an inexcusable blunder, 
to waste this wonderful opportunity upon a mere 



The Choice of a College 29 

name, a tradition or a sentiment. You should 
guard against this most carefully. 

You are to determine also whether you are to 
go to a college or to a university. In this coun- 
try we do not yet carefully distinguish these each 
from the other ; and many educational institu- 
tions are called universities when they are not 
even high-grade colleges. Generally speaking, 
a college confines its work to the field of the 
liberal arts, teaching science in a rather subsid- 
iary way, and giving its chief attention to the 
languages (especially the classics), mathematics, 
history, philosophy, and literature. The larger 
part of its work is carefully prescribed ; and if 
there is flexibility and choice, these are found 
in and between several fixed courses rather than 
in abundant electives within any given course. 
Little if any graduate work is undertaken, and 
no technical or professional training is offered. 
The catalogue of a university, on the other 
hand, shows a large number of separate schools 
or colleges under one general control ; it offers 
both technical and professional courses ; and it 
has a distinct faculty for graduate work. The 
college faculty will number perhaps fifteen 



30 The College Student and His Problems 

heads of departments, with enough tutors and 
assistants to bring the instructional corps up to 
possibly thirty-five in number. The official 
roster of a university may and often does show 
three hundred to four hundred names. The 
students at a college will number from two 
hundred to four hundred ; those of a uni- 
versity not infrequently aggregate three or four 
thousand. The work of a college very gener- 
ally takes the form of definite instruction, daily 
class work — the class being at least held to- 
gether by some definite text-book, even if not 
closely confined to this ; in the university the 
work is more frequently that of lectures, sup- 
plemented by independent effort in the laboratories 
and libraries. The university concerns itself 
more about technical, professional, and graduate 
work ; the college gives its entire strength to the 
undergraduate. The university expects more 
independent action on the part of those whose 
names appear upon the rolls. The college places 
teaching power at the very front. 

Whether you will choose a college or a uni- 
versity will depend somewhat upon your age, 
your maturity, and your preparation, as well as 



The Choice of a College 31 

upon what you propose to make of yourself. If 
you are still quite young ; or if you are imma- 
ture, thoughtless, or inconsiderate ; or if your 
preparation, though perhaps sufficient, lacks posi- 
tive strength and breadth and thoroughness, you 
ought to choose a college. Generally speaking, 
the small college is better prepared than is the 
average university to supplement a lack of self- 
control by its own constant oversight and direc- 
tion. Senator John J. Ingalls once said, " I did 
not get half as much from my college (Williams) 
as I might and ought ; but as I look back upon 
myself, at that time, I realize that I should have 
gone to pieces entirely in a university." Boys 
may still go to college — ought to go ; but only 
men ought to undertake the work of true uni- 
versity grade. Even those who are to carry on 
undergraduate work in some college of a uni- 
versity ought to be unusually mature and earnest 
and wise and strong, since the university college 
is often highly colored, in its methods at least, 
by its relations with more advanced work in the 
same institution. 

Partly because of university mismanagement, 
or at least indifference or neglect, and partly 



32 The College Student mid His Problems 

through the necessities and conditions of the 
case, the good small college has at least one 
decided advantage. You will come at once in 
contact with the very best men of the faculty ; 
you will be subject to all the inspiration and 
uplift which come from daily contact with these 
men ; stimulating and helpful personal relations 
are easily and immediately established. Quite 
the opposite is apt to be true of the university. 
The strongest men, the most noted men, are 
giving their time and strength and interest 
largely to investigation and research, and only 
meet students in an impersonal way and in a 
rather indifferent way, in the lecture room. As 
few if any institutions in this country can afford 
to have two equally able faculties, one for inves- 
tigation and one for instruction, the students in 
lower university classes and those in elementary 
laboratories are generally under the care of tutors 
or assistants, — young men, inexperienced men, 
often low-grade men. Hesitate though one well 
may in making the admission, yet it is only too 
true that first-year men at a university very 
often find themselves in the care of those who in 
teaching power, in scholarship, and in general 



The Choice of a College 33 

preparation for their work, are decidedly inferior 
to the masters and instructors of the first-class 
academies or high schools which the students 
have just left. This is one reason, perhaps the 
chief reason, why you need to be especially 
thoughtful and self-reliant if you are to attend 
a university. You will find far more freedom at 
the university, but you should be sure that you 
can be trusted to enjoy such freedom. It is very 
well to escape from leading strings if you are 
positive that you can go alone, that you can make 
real progress even though you may occasionally 
fall, that if you fall you can at least rise with 
your feet where your head la}^ — and thus gain 
a length. If you recognize that you need disci- 
pline other than self-discipline, choose a college. 
If you cannot be trusted to divide your own time, 
to set yourself to your own tasks, to choose your 
own associates, and generally to do your own 
work in your own way — by all means go to col- 
lege. You may fail even then ; but there are 
more chances of success than you will find in the 
larger field of the university. 

It is often urged that the college gives a man 
the opportunity for firmer friendships, that he 



34 Tlie College Student and His Problems 

comes more readily into close contact with his 
fellows, that he knows more men and knows 
them better than is possible in the large univer- 
sity. The expression runs in this way : " In 
college, a fellow knows everybody and everybody 
knows him ; in a university, nobody knows any- 
body." There is much fallacy in this. In the 
first place, the value of acquaintance and friend- 
ship is not to be measured by quantity but by 
quality. The close and lasting and sincere 
friendship of even one thoughtful, mature, strong 
man is of far more value than hail-fellow-well-met 
relations with twenty boys. The few men who 
spend hours together each day, intent upon a 
common task, or who sit about a seminar table 
absorbed in common research or in common dis- 
cussion, are far more stimulating and helpful to 
each other than are the Toms and Jims and 
Harrys who hurrah on the edge of the athletic 
field, or who always enjoy the light-hearted 
gayety which follows the close of a recitation — 
entirely natural and proper and even desirable 
as all this may be. Further, the larger the 
number of students the larger the opportunity 
for choice — and choice plays no small part in 



The Choice of a College 35 

forming helpful personal relations. And, lastly, 
there is a sense of common origin and common 
indebtedness and common pride which holds to- 
gether in most helpful relations even the thou- 
sands of graduates of the largest university. 
The sense of mutual interest, and the willingness 
to exert oneself for a fellow-graduate, seem quite 
as strong among the many as with the few, while 
the opportunities for helpfulness increase in direct 
proportion to the number of the graduates. An 
institution with a thousand alumni in each of 
the four great professions is more than five times 
as helpful to each graduate as an institution 
which has but two hundred representatives in 
each field ; because, all other things being equal, 
the chances of contact are so increased, and the 
entire field is so much more completely covered, 
and the ratio of positively influential men is so 
much greater. 

You are also called upon to choose between a 
college course and a technical or professional 
course. It is unfortunately true that you may 
still enter the professions vv^itliout having secured 
broad general training — though the standards 
of all such work are rising rapidly, many of 



36 The College Student and His Problems 

the best professional schools now demanding the 
equivalent of an approved college course as a 
condition precedent to their own work. How- 
ever, you are still able to pass from the academy 
or high school or fitting school directly to tech- 
nical or professional work in many institutions 
of at least fair standing. Shall you do this, or 
shall you continue your general-culture studies? 
That ought to be determined by two conditions 
only : your age and your financial resources. 

If for any reason you have been seriously de- 
layed in your preparation for college work, it 
may be best for you to take up your special 
training at once, — trusting to your intelligent 
ambition and to your earnest purpose to make 
good at some time in the future, by personal 
effort, your limited education. Every normal, 
average American ought to be on his feet and 
able to assume the duties and responsibilities of 
a citizen, breadwinner, and head of a household 
by his thirtieth year at least. He ought to look 
forward to this, to plan for this, and to demand 
this of himself and of his instructors. This 
means that he ought to be independent and self- 
supporting at the age of twenty-five. If modern 



The Choice of a College 37 

education — general and professional — is so long 
drawn out as to prevent this, then there is some- 
thing entirely wrong in the system. It is worse 
than absurd to say that a man reaches his ma- 
jority at twenty-one, that citizenship may then 
be his, but that for years afterwards he must be 
dependent upon others for his maintenance if he 
is to be well qualified for any of the constantly 
mutliplying professions. This is to bar the ap- 
proach to the professions and to all high callings 
with gates whose locks answer only to golden 
keys ; and this will not be tolerated in this 
country when the fact is once clearly known. 

If, therefore, you are so situated that you can- 
not take a full college course and be at your 
life-work by your twenty-fifth year, it will be 
better — with rare exceptions — to shorten your 
course and go without your bachelor's degree. 
But take what general work you can before you 
begin specializing. The broader and surer the 
foundation, the more stable and durable and sat- 
isfactory will be the superstructure. Do not let 
any foolish suggestions or kindly intentioned 
advice to the contrary of this have any weight. 
Education is a matter of time, and of consider- 



38 The College Student and His Problems 

able time. You can acquire information rapidly, 
but that is quite another matter. It is not so 
much what you know, as what you can do with 
what you know. One expert with a rapier is 
worth three thick-witted sluggards armed with 
broadswords. You need constant and prolonged 
mental exercise to give you full mastery of your 
powers, to make you alert and accurate and 
shrewd in scheming, and irresistible in onset. 
Get as much of all this as possible before turn- 
ing to your technical training, and you will find 
the latter far more easy to master, just as one 
who has taken a good course in general physi- 
cal training in a well-appointed gymnasium the 
more readily masters the use of the gloves or 
the foils. 

We have already spoken of the possibility of 
pecuniary embarrassment. All that need be said 
again and now is that it is better to borrow than 
to lose the opportunity ; only do not mortgage 
the future too heavily. 

One more choice must be made : will you at- 
tend an institution located in some large city, 
or in a village or small town ? If you are to 
go to a techincal school — as, an engineering 



The Choice of a College 39 

school or a school of architecture — the one lo- 
cated in a large city is to be selected without 
hesitation. Such aggregations of population in- 
variably and inevitably contain the best possible 
illustrations of the work to which you are to 
devote your life. Any city of three hundred 
thousand population and upwards will be one 
vast free laboratory and museum for you. Every 
street has its lessons. Life under such condi- 
tions is an education in itself. The opportuni- 
ties furnished by such a location give an almost 
infinite advantage to the bright, earnest fellow 
— with his eyes and ears wide open. And this is 
true, also, as to those who are studying for 
one of the four learned professions. The in- 
cipient lawyer finds courts of every style and 
title in which to study forms and methods, the- 
ory, and practice. The student of medicine and 
surgery has up-to-date hospitals open to his in- 
spection, and the work of most renowned prac- 
titioners constantly under his eye. One who is 
to minister to the spiritual wants of men has 
opportunity to study every phase of human life, 
as well as every form of ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion ; and the would-be teacher may investigate 



40 The College Student and His Problems 

every possible grade of educational work, public 
and private. It is absolutely impossible to find 
even a tithe of these opportunities outside the 
larger cities. 

But if you are to carry on the general-culture 
studies only, for a while at least, there are de- 
cided advantages in the village or smaller town. 
There are quiet and repose which the city never 
grants, which the city ever destroys. Hours of 
meditation, so strengthening and inspiring, are 
far more readily yours than when you are in the 
stir and whirl of the town. To those who come 
with open eyes and mind and heart, nature still 
speaks a varied language. The pace is not so 
fast, the battle is not so fierce, the struggle is not 
so strenuous, the strife is not so hot. The cap 
and gown, the cloister, the secluded quadrangle, 
the lonely midnight vigil with ancient worthies — 
these seem far more in place. 

Two things you will carefully keep in mind, 
however. First, when the entire community 
turns about the college, when the institution 
through its students and faculty dominates the 
town, when the college gives color to the social 
life and is practically indispensable to the very 



The Choice of a College 41 

existence of the community — then there is often 
developed among the students a spirit of lawless- 
ness, an undue sense of their own importance, a 
self-conceit, a very barren intellectual pride — all 
of which are absolutely fatal to sound growth 
and to true advancement. Second, the civiliza- 
tion of the twentieth century is surely to be of 
the urban type. The changes in population dur- 
ing the last twenty-five years prove this most 
conclusively. Our mastery of all the powers of 
earth and air seems to result inevitably in bring- 
ing men closer to their fellows. Civic life, civic 
manners, civic morals are to be ours from this 
time forth. The great problems which we are to 
solve, in every conceivable direction, are all civic. 
That institution, therefore, will be most truly 
helpful, and its graduates will receive most recog- 
nition and renown, which most quickly and com- 
pletely and helpfully puts its students in touch 
with civic life, in mastery of civic life ; and such 
contact and such mastery are most surely and 
most readily and most naturally found in the 
urban university. 



Ill 

The Selection of a Course 

In your choice of a college, you will be guided 
somewhat, perhaps even largely, by the course of 
study which you desire to pursue. In these days 
nearly every college offers more than a single 
course, while in all institutions at all prominent 
there is much freedom of movement. Reference 
is now to the various courses, and not to that 
which is generally known as the elective system, 
which bears more directly upon a possible choice 
of subjects within a given course. 

Taking into account the choice of a college 
as well as of a course, the field which you may 
traverse is a wide one, and the possibilities of 
selection are many. First, there is always the 
somewhat old-fashioned but very desirable course 
containing Latin and Greek, and leading to the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts. Then there are 
courses without Greek, substituting French or 

42 



The Selection of a Course 43 

German (or both) for this classic. There are 
courses with the modern languages only, to the 
exclusion of both of the classics. In one course, 
quite popular, it is possible to give special atten- 
tion to the three fundamental sciences : botany, 
chemistry, and physics. In another, very deserv- 
edly growing in favor, the key-note is history 
and political science. If you are to study law, 
you may have your undergraduate work colored 
largely by civics, economics, sociology, and 
American history. If you are to prepare for 
journalism, you will be encouraged to strengthen 
yourself in English. Some institutions permit a 
student to carry an unusual number of subjects 
bearing especially upon finance and public admin- 
istration. To these, and more, must be added the 
more strictly technical (undergraduate) courses 
now offered in many institutions of higher learn- 
ing, especially in universities founded upon land 
grants from the general government, and gener- 
ally known as state institutions ; such as the 
courses in civil engineering, electrical engineer- 
ing, mechanical engineering, mine engineering, 
agriculture, horticulture, forestry, architecture, 
ceramics, chemistry, and metallurgy. 



44 The College Student and His Problems 

In addition to all these, it is now quite possible 
to find, in colleges and universities of excellent 
repute, special or " short " courses for those of 
mature years, not seeking a degree or other 
academic recognition, but desiring to add to 
their earning power or to enlarge their general 
efficiency. 

It is generally — not always — true that the 
early work in these courses is of such a nature 
that if you find you have made a mistake in your 
choice, you can turn into another course, say not 
later than the close of the first year, without seri- 
ous loss of time and effort. Of course, from the 
standpoint of general culture you will be at no 
loss whatever; for a year's honest work in col- 
lege is never thrown away. But if you must 
reach the goal of a degree within a given time, a 
false start or a by-path may cost you much trouble. 
Under such conditions, you should determine your 
choice with great care. 

The more highly specialized your course, the 
more certain ought you to be that the end is that 
which you desire. To put three or four years' 
work upon electrical engineering when you may 
wish to study medicine would be folly indeed. 



The Selection of a Course 45 

To specialize in the sciences will not prove the 
best door to literary success. It is quite neces- 
sary, therefore, that you know yourself and your 
purposes, something quite definitely of your 
capacity and powers — and you should note the 
clear difference between these two — if you are to 
make a wise selection of your work. In the ineffi- 
ciency or inexactness of such knowledge the 
college finds one weakness and one danger in 
multiplying courses, or in enlarging the number 
of electives within a course. 

For very few young men know themselves at 
the age at which they enter college ; and I think 
that others know them even less accurately. 
Granted all that may be said — and much may be 
truthfully said — about the rapid development of 
the individuality of the American boy, of the 
wshrewdness and acuteness and the maturity of 
judgment which are his at (say) eighteen years 
of age, two facts remain forever beyond dispute. 
First, there is enough difficulty in changing from 
one field to another to make most men dread this 
and avoid this — even when conscious that an 
error has been made. So they remain fixed in 
callings in which they meet with but only ordinary 



46 The College Student and His Problems 

success, because of only half-hearted devotion. 
Second, most men who seem to have found their 
true places in this world have found these by try- 
ing several places. Of this there are illustrations 
without number. Once in a while — rarely twice 
in even a great while — men seem to go to their 
life-work with unerring instinct, from the very 
cradle. But the boy who " has always been mak- 
ing some kind of machinery " does not necessarily 
succeed as a mechanical engineer any more than 
the boy who " has always been doctoring sick 
cats, and setting the broken legs for all the dogs 
in the neighborhood " (" a born bone setter " as 
the phrase once ran) is a natural doctor ; the kind 
of doctor, by the way, of whom people will do well 
to beware. It is because of this uncertainty of 
purpose and this ignorance of self that the wisest 
educators and the most thoughtful students of 
mankind have always given such loyal adherence 
to the general-culture courses, and especially to 
the classical courses. 

This adherence does not mean that all culture 
power is denied to other courses. It is simply an 
insistence upon that broad and humanizing work 
which has been and which ever will be one of the 



The Selection of a Course 47 

best and surest foundations for large and gener- 
ous life. If you really desire to find yourself, 
you must look yourself all over. It is no more 
satisfactory and conclusive to stare steadil}^ and 
only at your mathematical faculty or your lin- 
guistic ability, than it is to examine only your 
fingers or your toes. It is not a question as to 
whether manual training brings some general cul- 
ture as well as mere dexterity — no one whose 
opinion is of the slightest value will deny that 
the two may go together ; it is a question as to 
what line of work gives the greatest general cul- 
ture. You are less concerned about the depth 
and thickness and strength of the foundation 
wall on one side of the building, and more con- 
cerned about the breadth and general sufiiciency 
of the entire foundation. You are not yet sure 
about the building which you are to erect upon 
these foundations — and they ought to be large 
enough, and strong enough, to carry anything 
you may wish to build. You cannot erect a com- 
fortable residence on a six-by-nine cellar wall. 
It fell to my lot once, speaking for a large num- 
ber of his fellow-citizens, to offer a gentleman 
peculiar recognition and promotion. " I must 



48 The College Student and His Problems 

decline," he said to me privately ; " I know my 
limitations, and I am not equal to the task. My 
early education was neglected, I was allowed to 
go to my life-work without completing even my 
high school course ; and at forty years of age I 
am at the end of my rope." I did not quite 
believe this, but he was firm in his sad decision. 
Broad, general culture, secured by sound 
methods and under the guidance of inspiring 
teachers, becomes a magic wand waved over your 
entire nature. Just as particles of steel will 
leap from the dust to kiss the face of a magnet 
passed above them, so the best that is in you will 
come to the surface under such training. You 
will begin to see yourself in true perspective. 
You will learn what manner of man you really 
are, what sort of a world you are in, who and 
what are your companions, what was your origin 
and what is your probable destination ; and what 
you had better do about all this, under the cir- 
cumstances. You will come into some measure 
of self-control. The powers of concentration and 
application will be developed. An old farmer 
once told me that he liked to have college-bred 
boys work for him : " You don't have to tell them 



The Selection of a Course 49 

everything and you don't have to tell them the 
same thing twice. They have some discretion ; 
and they have memories that will last them over 
night." You will find your general horizon 
widening, you will be able to see several objects 
at once and to see each distinctly. You will have 
learned that while with mathematical accuracy 
two and two always make four, by adding a cer- 
tain amount of personality the result will very 
nearly equal five. 

I have seen so many men crippled by inadequate 
training that it is hard to turn from this appeal 
for general culture. Of course, what you will get 
out of it all will depend entirely upon yourself. 
In the quaint but forceful phrase of the common 
people, all education can do is to help you to 
make the most of yourself. This should be kept 
clearly in mind in selecting your course. In 
middle and later life you will not be measured by 
your possessions, but by your usefulness, your 
efficiency ; not by what you have managed to get 
out of the community, but by what the community 
can contrive to get out of you. Even your 
material success will depend upon the quantity 
and quality of the service which you can render. 



50 The College Student and His Problems 

A man is worth to himself just what he is capable 
of enjoying. This means the utmost enlargement 
of his capacity. He is worth to the world just 
what he is capable of imparting, and this means 
the utmost development of every power. These 
two, capacity and power, form the truest standard, 
the most accurate measure, of every man. Any- 
thing less than this highest development, this 
making the most of yourself in a very literal sense, 
is not only withdrawing yourself from the best 
that may be and contenting yourself with the less 
that is, but is robbing the state and society of 
effective manhood. Endeavor to determine, there- 
fore, which course will be most helpful in the 
matter of your general growth. You should 
make sure that you are a man as well as an engi- 
neer, or a lawyer, or a scientist, or a minister, or 
a doctor, or a teacher — really, you should be a 
man before you are any of these and as a condi- 
tion-precedent to becoming any of these. It is 
not necessary to choose between the two; you can 
be both, you ought to be both — but you will be 
the more sure of large and enduring success in 
any special work if you bottom it upon broad, 
general culture. 



The Selection of a Course 51 

You ought to make language the centre and 
core of your college course. The mastery of one's 
mother tongue is of the very first importance, 
from every point of view ; but you really cannot 
master English, in any true or large sense of the 
words, without knowing something of other 
languages. I push language work into this prom- 
inence, not because of any personal interest (I 
have never taught other than English, and that 
but for a short time), but because the very nature 
of language seems to demand this recognition. 
Remember that in all your education you are 
never to prefer mere erudition to power. You 
must increase your knowledge, of course — rightly, 
and on many lines ; but do not be deceived into 
thinking that the increase of knowledge is all that 
is desirable or is the most that is desirable. The 
most desirable growth is in the ability to use 
knowledge effectively. A man with a poniard 
which he knows how to use is better armed than 
if he has the finest Damascus blade which he 
cannot wield. Further, there is no vital, sane, 
sure intellectual life except that which is largely 
shared w^ith others. Nowhere is there more com- 
plete exemplification of the truth that he who 



52 The College Student and His Problems 

would save his life loses it, that there is a giving 
which is a getting and a withholding which is 
simply a scattering abroad. There will be no true 
interpretation of yourself except in relation to 
others ; and you cannot interpret yourself to 
others except through language. You cannot 
awaken intelligence without awakening at the 
same time a very rational and imperative desire 
to extend intelligence ; and you can only extend 
it by means of language. If you do not extend 
it, the awakening will avail but little ; without 
movement, all life soon dies. 

Nor can you even think clearly without a good 
and sufficient command of language. The stu- 
dent who answers " I know but I cannot tell," 
simply does not truly know. Certainly the men- 
tal process can only be final and complete when it 
has clearly and completely expressed itself — to 
itself, at least. If there has ever been a great 
mind without a great mastery of words, the world 
does not know the fact ; the world cannot know 
the fact. Only by this more perfect knowledge 
of language can you possibly hope to understand 
either the present or the past, can you project 
yourself upon either the present or the future. 



The Selection of a Course 53 

It is especially true in a country like our own 
that the tongue-tied citizen, the man who neither 
by pen nor by the spoken word can express his 
thoughts and hopes and fears and purposes and 
desires, is far less effective in his citizenship than 
one who has full power of speech. No matter 
what may be your profession or calling, thought 
and expression must be commensurate. Lan- 
guage is the instrument of thought, but it is 
also the very embodiment of thought. Thought 
simply cannot live without language ; not neces- 
sarily spoken or written, but used to clarify and 
crystallize thought. To master language is to 
have full liberty in the intellectual world, is to 
master the human life which language infolds and 
unfolds. 

Next to language, you ought to select a course 
which will insure you ample training in history, 
especially in American history, and in civics. 
No man can be an efficient citizen who has not 
ample and clear knowledge of the work of his 
father and of his father's father, and of the civil 
system under which he lives. If you are to be 
a man among men, to play a man's part, to exert 
some influence in public affairs, you should seek 



54 The College Student and His Problems 

and secure sound training in these all important, 
all pervasive subjects. Never forget that the 
public business of this country is the private 
business of every adult within its borders. Only 
as we realize this and actively and intelligently 
participate in the public business, can we hope for 
a right or a righteous administration of public 
affairs. The importance of instruction in Amer- 
ican history, and in what may be termed the 
questions of the day, is now so clearly recognized 
that not to give these subjects a definite and as- 
sured place in the curriculum is to score against 
the college or university from the very start. 
Other things being at all equal, you are safe in 
determining your choice of a college by the rec- 
ognition given these branches. 

Knowing that you will have adequate oppor- 
tunities in the study of your mother tongue, of 
its literature, and of some of the other languages 
kindred to it, from whose confluence flows the 
great stream of English which is now so insist- 
ently and powerfully overflowing the known 
world; and having selected a course which in- 
cludes history and civics (or political science, to 
use a more generic term) — it really matters little 



The Selection of a Course 55 

with what else you occupy your time. You will 
of course get enough of one or two fundamental 
sciences to quicken your appreciation of the sci- 
entific temper and method, and of the great 
results which have followed the incoming of 
these. You will take mathematics for the sake 
of the effect upon your reasoning powers. (Mr. 
Webster is said to have gone over his plane and 
solid geometry every year of his public life, to 
strengthen himself in all the processes of logic.) 
Above all, you will be sure to undertake at least 
a few things which you do not like ; since the 
fact that this or that is distasteful to you shows 
the desirability of strengthening that particular 
part of your mentality to which the particular 
subject does not appeal. Further, you should 
give yourself the discipline of attacking and mas- 
tering much that presents a repellent front. The 
greater part of the world's work becomes more 
or less distasteful to those engaged in it, and is 
oftener accomplished under pressure of necessity 
br of a sense of duty, than from inclination. 
You should learn to do such work in that way. 
The value of examinations still lies largely in the 
fact that they compel the student suddenly to 



56 The Qollege Student and His Problems 

pull himself together, to concentrate all his ener- 
gies, and with unusual staying power and in a 
masterful temper to meet one of life's many emer- 
gencies. So the value of many themes is to be 
found in the downright hard work required to 
drive yourself through with the task. 

In selecting your course, or the subjects within 
the course, there is no reason why you shall 
not pay considerable regard to your probable 
future, while keeping fast hold upon general 
culture. If the chances are that you will study 
law or turn to journalism, then as far as possible 
strengthen yourself in political and constitu- 
tional history and in political science. If you 
will probably practise medicine, you should 
give special attention to the various forms of 
biology. If you hope to enter the field of 
letters, add to your prescribed work much of lan- 
guage and literature — especially along the lines 
of criticism and construction. If you are to 
expend your strength in the business world, 
take special work in economics, banking and 
finance, and in general administration — both 
public and private. If you hope for preferment 
in politics, using the word as entirely synony- 



The Selection of a Course 57 

mous with the public service — and using these 
latter words in their ancient and honored 
though somewhat forgotten meaning of serving 
the public — you ought to dwell upon the 
elements of the common law, upon institu- 
tional law and the history of diplomacy, upon 
constitutional and political history again, upon 
the industrial history of this country. If you 
are thinking of the ministry or of teaching, 
your best and most important work will lie in 
psychology, physiology, sociology, and education. 
Some institutions now make special provision 
for so fusing the undergraduate work with that 
of the graduate in the professional school, that 
some credits in the last college year will count 
as credits for part of the strictly professional 
work which is to follow, thus saving from a half 
year to an entire year. An institution whose 
management is as wise and large minded and 
helpful as that deserves your careful and appre- 
ciative consideration. 

Just a word further as to the special or " short " 
courses offered by some institutions. If possible 
avoid them. If for any reason you are so late 
in beginning your college work that you are 



58 The College Student and His Problems 

positive that you cannot graduate, or if you are 
so desperately poor that you are assured that 
you can have only half of the educational loaf, 
then you may rightly consider these courses. 
They are much better than nothing, — generally 
they are carefully planned, and they are made as 
effective as possible under all existing conditions ; 
but you should turn to them only under pressure 
of most dire necessity, and with the keen sense 
of the loss which the courses entail — a loss which 
ought to be positively unavoidable before it is 
patiently endured. It is rarely possible to make 
good this loss if by some unexpected good fortune 
you are enabled to complete the work for a 
degree. Much valuable time is thus thrown 
away, and more than once I have known men 
forever deprived of academic recognition because 
they found it impossible to bring together, in a 
way which would count toward a degree, scat- 
tered work which they had undertaken under 
the impression that " it was just as good as 
a regular course," or was "more practical," or 
because when they entered college they could 
not see their way clear to the finish. Let the 
"short" or special courses alone, then, unless 



The Selection of a Course 59 

your thin pocket-book or your advanced years 
positively demand this sacrifice. 

Your wisest adviser in all this matter ought to 
be the president of the college, or the principal 
of your preparatory school. The best members 
of a college faculty are only human, and quite 
generally (and quite unconsciously) are influenced 
by their devotion and their loyalty to their 
respective departments. Their chosen life-work 
naturally and inevitably colors the glasses through 
which they look at the work of other depart- 
ments. The president is presumed to see things 
in a somewhat better perspective, to have a 
broader outlook, to more wisely relate the de- 
partments to each other and to the great world 
outside. But the man who ought to know you 
best, and to know the best for you, is the princi- 
pal under whom you have spent at least four 
of the most productive years of your life. A 
wise and loving teacher is about the best friend 
a boy can have, in any event. In no other 
direction is this affectionate interest more help- 
fully manifested than in aiding the boy to make 
a wise choice of both college and course. It is 
a rare opportunity, which every teacher ought 



60 The College Student and His Problems 

to accept as burdened with unusual responsibility, 
yet as bringing a lofty privilege. To set the 
feet of a child well within the beaten path of 
knowledge, and to see the growth in grace and 
strength and favor with God and man which is 
sure to follow a wise choice of ends and means — 
this is the very highest reward. 




IV 

The Fateful First Year 

Well begun is half done, runs an old proverb, 
and it is quite literally true. This is why your 
first year in college is one of the most important 
years of your life. So pervasive and far reaching 
are its results that the adjective fateful is well 
chosen. If you are so strong, so industrious, so 
faithful, so honest with yourself and with others, 
that you succeed, there is little danger of failure 
in any undertaking of your later life. On the 
other hand, if you prove weak, and indolent, and 
disloyal, and dishonest, there is but slight chance 
of your ever doing anything really worth while. 
There have been, and doubtless there always will 
be, some very notable exceptions to both rules ; 
but they are easily recognized as exceptions, and 
as quite rare exceptions at that. The reason for 
this is plain. Just as in later life the bones 

61 



62 The College Student and His Problems 

become so calcined that it is not only quite im- 
possible to undergo physical training which might 
secure betterment of form but almost dangerous 
to undertake such work ; so the habits of concen- 
tration, persistence, industry, and faithful en- 
deavor — or their opposites — may with extreme 
difficulty be broken down or changed. It is a 
very difficult task to make over a man in middle 
life. The habits formed during a college career, 
the momentum there acquired, send one well 
along to middle life without much hope or dan- 
ger of change. 

Your freshman year is preeminently a year of 
transition, and transition periods are always 
doubtful and distressing and dangerous. You 
have ceased to be a schoolboy, and have become a 
collegian ; you are no longer a pupil, but a 
student ; you are no more under tutelage and 
supervision as to every detail of your work, but 
you have come into a greatly enlarged freedom. 
You are uncertain of yourself, of your immediate 
present, and of your entire future. All is new 
to you, very little that you have experienced is 
helpful to you ; you are a beginner, and a fresh- 
man in a very strict sense. You are neither boy 



The Fateful First Year 63 

nor man. You still have many of the tastes and 
habits of the boy ; there have come to you some 
of the emotions and ambitions and aspirations 
of a man. This condition creates very serious 
difficulties in determining your relations to others 
or their relations to you. If you are treated 
like a boy, you resent it and become unpleas- 
antly aggressive. If you are treated like a man, 
you are disappointing — and you yourself con- 
stantly ask those in authority to remember that 
"boys will be boys." I am writing very frankly, 
because you really ought to see this matter 
exactly as it is. 

This first year is one of adjustment. You 
are to get your bearings, to find the true point 
of perspective, to discover yourself. It is as 
though the curtain had risen upon an entirely 
new scene ; and your place on the stage, your 
cues and exits and entrances, your lines, are all 
to be learned. You will find less of the letter 
and more of the spirit, less of memoriter work 
and more of comprehension and positive assimi- 
lation, less of recitation and more of discussion, 
less of the single text and more of collateral 
reading, less of mechanism and more of life. 



64 The College Student and His Problems 

Your work will be more difficult, but will be 
more enjoyable ; your road will be somewhat 
rougher, but the end of the journey will bring 
all the more pleasure ; your effort will be more 
wearing, but the achievement will repay in far 
greater proportion. 

This is a year in which you are to establish 
precedents and to fix habits. If you go about 
your work systematically, in an orderly way, 
with a definite movement, you will not depart 
from these methods in later life. If you are 
loose, and disjointed, and slack- twisted, and per- 
mit yourself to become mentally frayed-at-the- 
edges, the chances are against your ever pulling 
yourself together and going about any task in 
a really masterful way. Start right, then, with 
accuracy and promptness and snap and vim, and 
every day of your life will find you moving 
more easily and more surely and more success- 
fully. Dawdle, and shuffle, and evade, and 
whine, and your fate is sealed. May God have 
pity on you, for you may be sure man will have 
none. Long before you have reached even mid- 
dle life, you will have been cast into the human 
scrap-heap — worthless. It is a sad fate, ter- 



The Fateful First Year 65 

ribly sad, and peculiarly sad because so wholly 
avoidable. / 

In college you are beginning life. Some 
people will tell you that you are preparing to 
begin life, but do not believe them. Do all you 
possibly can to prove that the contrary is true. 
To exist is easy, almost too easy ; but to live 
is a far different thing. You are not going out 
into the world ; you have already entered the 
world. The question of self-mastery is not to 
come to you by and by ; it is with you at this 
very moment. It is not in the distant, in- 
definite future that you may be called into 
action ; the call is even now in your ears. 
You may sit among the favored sons who are 
princes, or below the salt with the hirelings — 
it is for you to determine, and you are to 
determine now. It is for you to say whether 
this is to be a year of promise or a year of 
failure. If of promise, there is almost no doubt 
of fulfilment. If of failure, it will be failure 
dire, disastrous, and final. In my observation 
of more than a quarter of a century, I have 
rarely known a man to be much other than 
what his first college year made him, or left 



66 The College Student and His Problems 

him. The exceptions are not so rare as to 
make you hopeless, but they are so rare that 
you ought to strain every nerve for success. 

It is especially true that the college work of 
the last three years is peculiarly dependent 
upon the thoroughness and accuracy of the work 
of the first year. If your freshman mathematics 
are treated carelessly, you will go deeper in the 
mathematical mire each term and each year 
thereafter ; and while you may possibly secure 
the " pass " in the mathematics of the general 
course, you will lose all the training and mental 
development peculiar to this study, and you will 
become totally unfitted for any technical work 
whatever. If the details of construction in lan- 
guage work are sliglited and slurred, you will 
never acquire that ease and freedom of move- 
ment which alone assures the enjoyment that 
comes from companionship with the best spirits 
of the past. If the sources of history are not 
thoroughly explored, you cannot sail with de- 
light upon that vast and increasing river of 
human events whose onflow has brought us all 
the richness and gratification of the present. If 
the beginnings of science are not mastered, you 



The Fateful First Year 67 

may be sure that you will not acquire that 
habit of accurate investigation, that unwilling- 
ness to be content with vague and general 
statements as to "more or less," that insistence 
upon knowing whether it is more or less and ex- 
actly how much more or how much less, which 
are so very essential to all lasting success under 
present world conditions. If you would be happy 
and care -free in your later course, start right. 

Are you to room in one of the dormitories 
or at a private house ? That will depend 
largely upon yourself and upon conditions. If 
you are reasonably . sure of yourself, if you know 
that your moral backbone is in place and is in 
good working order ; if you are prepared to 
fight to a finish all the direct and indirect, the 
known and unknown, temptations of mass life — 
then chose the dormitory, provided always that 
it is well managed and clean and in a thor- 
oughly approved sanitary condition. But if you 
are at all in doubt, give yourself the benefit of 
the doubt, and go to some private house during 
your first year. There will be some restraints, 
of course ; but these will be helpful rather than 
merely irksome. The sense of responsibility, of 



68 The College Student and His Problems 

relief from a certain accountability, of freedom 
from restraint, is precisely that characteristic of 
life in a large city which makes such life posi- 
tively dangerous to all but strong, self-contained 
men. By some strange fatuity we tend to re- 
vert to barbarism, and we constantly need the 
pressure of restraint placed upon us by known 
and fixed relations to others. It will be a good 
thing for you, in every way, to know and feel 
these relations ; and you will be spared much 
that would unduly vex and try you, and waste 
your time and strength, in this first year in 
which you need about all of both time and 
strength for the work immediately in hand. 
You need not be a recluse because your room 
is in a private house. You should board else- 
where, and make table companions at least of 
your classmates and others ; and you should be 
much among men. But your room should be 
your castle, to which you can retire at any time 
and be sure of carrying your work without the 
slightest fear of interruption. This privacy and 
these quiet hours are all the more assured to 
you if there are no other students, or but few 
other students, rooming in the same house. 



The Fateful First Year 69 

But after the first-year battle is over, and you 
have fairly won, and feel sure of yourself and of 
your position — then go to the dormitory, or to 
the fraternity house, or where you please. The 
more constant and intimate your contact with 
men and affairs the better : always subject to 
faithful work on that part of the curriculum 
then under consideration. This is perhaps a 
proper place in which to urge that during the 
last three years of your course you ought to meet 
and know as many men as possible. To come 
wisely and studiously and helpfully in contact 
with your fellows is a large education in itself. 
Nothing so completely repays study as man, or 
men. Rocks may be exceedingly interesting to 
the geologist, and bugs may seem to satisfy all 
the higher cravings of the entomologist ; but 
man is surely of higher importance and of greater 
interest than either. Cultivate man, therefore, 
for the benefits conferred as well as received. 
You will not always be the recipient ; there will 
surely come a time when you can give and give 
freely — wise counsel, encouragement, friendship 
— a giving which in itself will prove a getting, 
and a getting even more abundantly. You need 



70 The College Student and His Problems 

not have many friends, probably you will not 
have many ; but you ought to have a large list of 
acquaintances. The larger the variety of types, 
the more valuable will be your contact with 
them. The strength and completeness of a com- 
posite picture lies in the number of sitters ; and 
if you are to know the world at all well, you 
must know it along world lines. No single habit 
or power will be more helpful to you in later life 
than the habit or power of grappling with men 
and holding them fast to you, with a sense of 
pleasure in their acquaintance with you. I have 
known many men whose general success seemed 
to turn upon this one characteristic, and I have 
known many men who utterly failed because 
they had none of this power. I well recall a 
student who, because of friendly banter, sat 
down to see how many of his fellows he could 
name and so describe as to enable us to identify 
them. When he closed at something over three 
hundred, I think we all felt that he was on the 
high road to success, no matter what might be 
his chosen path ; and the passing years have 
approved our opinion. This is one reason why 
there is peculiar advantage in the large univer- 



The Fateful First Year 71 

sity. Once I heard a student complain that there 
was little or no companionship possible at the 
university where he was getting the last half of 
his undergraduate course. Referring to the small 
college where he had been a freshman and a 
sophomore he said : " There I knew almost every- 
body, here I know almost nobody." Yet careful 
inquiry showed that of some five thousand stu- 
dents he knew reasonably well more than two 
hundred, while at college he could only have 
known one hundred and forty-three even if he 
had literally "known everybody" — since those 
were all there were to know. 

It is this breadth of acquaintance which is 
peculiarly and practically helpful to a man after 
he leaves college. No men are quite as warm 
and cordial and friendly and unselfish in their 
relations as are the alumni of any given institu- 
tion. There is no little enlightened selfishness, 
then, in cultivating men. 

Are you to have a room-mate during your first 
year? Not unless all conditions are extraordi- 
narily favorable. If you are positively sure of 
your man, — in mind and purpose and heart and 
temper and soul and strength, — take him if you 



72 The College Student and His Problems 

wish. Even then, the chances are that there are 
characteristics of your own which make it more 
desirable that you fight out this first year's battle 
alone — entirely alone. It is almost impossible 
for two room-mates to be so evenly balanced that 
one does not come to depend unduly upon the 
other. It is difficult to conceive of a worse 
mental habit than " studying together " — en- 
tirely different from a conference at the close of 
the work ; and one or the other of the parti- 
cipants is sure to go lame before the end of the 
race. There is grave danger, also, of a certain 
moral dependence, a leaning of the one conscience 
upon the other, which naturally and inevitably 
results in moral flabbiness, and in a general in- 
ability to use one's moral legs. There is great 
and entirely reasonable pleasure in the intimacy 
which comes from sharing the same room ; and 
some of the most delightful and inspiring and 
lasting friendships have begun in this way. But 
there is time for all these later : when you have 
your second wind, and know the course and the 
pace, and are running the race easily and with- 
out the stress and strain of the first half. The 
slower you are in making friends, the more care- 



The Fateful First Year 73 

ful your choice of those with whom you are to 
be intimate — the fewer you will be compelled to 
throw aside in the final analyses ; and the discard 
is always unpleasant if not positively painful. 

Now, as to your use of time. You are to 
carry the equivalent of at least three studies or 
"hours," each of five week days. The general 
educational rule is that for each hour in the 
lecture room or class room the average student 
will spend two hours in preparation. This 
means nine hours of work each day. But one 
study is quite likely to be a science, in which 
two hours in the laboratory count for but one 
hour of outside work. This will make ten hours 
a day. You should have at least eight hours 
of sleep. To dressing and undressing, bathing, 
shaving (for you have reached this great dis- 
tinction !), and other personal matters, you will 
give at least an hour and a half. To your 
three meals (including going and coming, if 
they are not taken where you room, and the 
few moments of social intercourse both before 
and after each) you ought to give at least two 
hours. You should have at least one hour for 
exercise : definite, intelligent, spirited, and al- 



74 The College Student and His Problems 

ways out of doors if possible. You have left, 
then, only an hour and a half of each working- 
day for the hundred-and-one extras, the emer- 
gencies, the unforeseen matters, the multitudi- 
nous demands of the public college life, the 
amusements and the creature comforts of exist- 
ence, your correspondence, all the minor inci- 
dents which so continuously press upon time 
and strength and attention. A well-ordered, 
carefully regulated life, therefore, becomes an 
absolute necessity. 

I press this somewhat sharply and insistently, 
because so much depends upon it, because so 
many men have gone to pieces through neglect 
of this, because so few are careful to conserve 
their energies by a systematic use of time and 
strength. There is no thought of hard and 
fast rules. I have little patience with that 
temper or habit which makes it impossible for 
a man to study Greek except in a certain chair 
in a fixed corner of the room and at a given 
hour ; or which makes a man lose something 
really worth while because at that same hour 
he had agreed with himself to do some other 
and far less important thing. All that is sought 



The Fateful First Year 75 

is to make such an exact and mathematical 
statement of the demands of each day that you 
will see clearly the necessity of methodical 
effort, of an intelligent apprehension of what 
you are facing each day, and of the utmost 
faithfulness and loyalty to the work in hand. 
A margin of ninety minutes each day is very 
easily dissipated and gone, without one's realiz- 
ing it ; and every minute lost thereafter is a 
step on the road to student bankruptcy. When 
one recalls the many daily incidents which draw 
upon a student's time, it is not difficult to 
understand the demand for stern self-control, 
especially during the first weeks of adjustment 
to all that is so new and strange. It is because 
you are so necessarily and so wholly inexpe- 
rienced in this matter, and so extremely liable 
to go wrong and let your time be frittered 
away in a manner that can bring you only dis- 
appointment and discouragement and probably 
failure, that I make so much of this one feature 
of your new life. 

Let us express all this in figures, and see how 
the average day will be divided and spent. 
Remember, this allotment is made upon a basis 



76 The College Student and His Problems 

of three courses only, with no "conditions" to 
be made up, or other extra demands upon your 
time. If you are carrying scientific or techni- 
cal work, the chances are that you will have 
nearly one-fourth greater demand. But with 
three hours, each day, or fifteen hours each 
week, your time will be spent about as fol- 
lows : — 

Rise at half past six and be ready for break- 
fast at seven. At half past seven leave your 
boarding house for the class room. One hour — 
from eight till nine — will be given to a lecture. 
Study from nine until eleven, at which hour 
will come your second lecture. It will take a 
half hour to clear up odds and ends and get 
to your luncheon ; and one of the wisest things 
you can do is to give the hour after lunch- 
eon to light exercise, lounging, and social inter- 
course. From two until four you are at your 
books again, with the last lecture hour running 
till five. From five until six you ought to 
be on the athletic field or in the gymnasium — 
and it will take a half hour more to get your 
bath and " rub-down," and reach the dinner 
table. By half past seven you will be in your 



The Fateful First Year 77 

room and ready for work ; and three busy 
hours take you till bedtime — half past ten. 

Whatever the variants may be, that is quite 
a fair picture of the well-ordered life of the 
average college man. You will easily see that 
he is constantly on the danger line, as well as 
on the firing line. An evening at the theatre, 
or with friends, or made inefficient by an attack 
of the blues, or given to some college function, 
makes a sad inroad indeed ; and a decided loss 
can be averted only by a most industrious use 
of Saturday. But as your work progresses you 
will find that even Saturday furnishes less and 
less of a margin ; for that will be given largely 
to the many extra demands constantly arising, 
to preparation for public debate, to the discharge 
of duties as officer of one or more college 
organizations, to writing some theme, to some 
athletic or other college function, to some 
special reading and research in the college 
library, to shopping or other necessary petty 
business for yourself. These, and more like 
these, will soon entirely fill each holiday or 
half holiday. Your regular work must be 
accomplished within the five days of their equiv- 



78 The College Student and His Problems 

alent, or it will not be accomplished at all ; 
and to accomplish it you will need some such 
definite working schedule as I have suggested. 

President Hinsdale used to tell of a competition 
between James A. Garfield (when he was a stu- 
dent at Hiram College) and a fellow-student, 
which was so close that the entire college became 
interested ; and students were in the habit of 
watching the windows of the contestants, even- 
ings. Garfield's competitor was the more brilliant 
fellow of the two ; but the students finally dis- 
covered that Garfield had laid out the work of 
each day very methodically, and that at night his 
light burned about twenty' minutes longer than 
that of his competitor. "The methodical work 
and the extra twenty minutes won ! " 

There is another result of this regular and 
methodical work which in itself more than repays 
for all real or apparent sacrifice ; and that is, that 
the dread of examinations is practically unknown. 
The chief value of a properly conducted examina- 
tion is that the student cannot determine in 
advance what is to be either its general course 
or its more specific direction. He is suddenly 
obliged, therefore, to face an emergency, and to 



The Fateful First Year 79 

call all his powers into action. But just as con- 
stant and faithful work in the gymnasium takes 
away all the fear so often manifested by an ama- 
teur, because the expert has come into reasonable 
mastery of all his physical powers and knows 
exactly what he can do with his body, so faith- 
ful daily effort enables a man to move so easily 
and so freely in the world of ideas that he no 
longer fears a fall. He has such a mastery of the 
subject that a sudden call to tell what he knows 
about it has no terror and does not disconcert him 
in the least. This is far and away better than a 
constant fluctuation between idleness and indif- 
ference, and repeated cramming. Many a time 
during his life a man is obliged to increase his in- 
formation upon a given subject and to increase it 
largely and suddenly ; and for one I do not object 
to occasional cramming, since it is an experience 
not without practical value. But the all-around 
cramming which is so often made necessary by 
continual neglect of daily duty is one of the 
most disastrous practices imaginable. It is 
hardly too much to say that it were better not 
to go through college at all than to go through 
in this way. 



80 The College Student and His Problems 

One last word as to methods : do not let your 
work intrude upon the hours of the Sabbath. If 
you are wise you will keep that day sacred to that 
" other life " which every man, especially every 
hard-working man, ought to recognize and culti- 
vate. Nothing so emphatically marks a country 
as Christian, as the general observance of the 
first day of the week by the cessation of regular 
business or week-day toil. The certainty and 
frequency and regularity of the recurrence of this 
day of total rest is one of the greatest blessings 
in modern life clearly recognized as such by any 
well-constituted society. We all need to guard 
most carefully against that weakness which inev- 
itably follows upon unremitting strain ; and most 
of us ought carefully to avoid the cramp and 
narrowness which surely come from being en- 
grossed in one calling or in any one line of work. 
The Sabbath should always bring you freedom 
and enlargement. If you desire '' to love mercy, 
to do justly, and to walk humbly," — and better, 
saner, or more wholesome life than this, no man 
has yet known, — you will be in some regular 
place of worship for at least one service of the 
day ; " for two reasons — first, because Christian- 



The Fateful First Year 81 

ity is essentially an ethical religion, by the teach- 
ing of which every moral being may profit ; and 
second, because it is an unhappy thing for a man, 
a member of the social organism, to withdraw 
himself from all part in that which, according to 
Socrates, is the most distinct act of a reasoning 
animal, the acknowledgment of the great com- 
mon source of all existence, of all reason, and of 
all excellence." The rest of the day may be 
spent as your intelligence, your sympathies, and 
your conscience may permit. It is a good day 
for good deeds : for an hour with the sick, for a 
long and earnest talk with a friend, for a quiet 
walk abroad, for helpful and stimulating inter- 
course with those older than yourself, for reading 
on lines for which the work of the week gives 
you neither time nor inclination — "a long swim 
in the broad sea of genial human sympathy," as 
some one has put it ; for a letter home ; for some 
generous gift of time and talent in behalf of fel- 
low-beings who are less fortunate than yourself, 
whose hopelessness needs your courage, whose 
ignorance or suffering or weakness makes a right- 
ful and strong claim upon your knowledge or 
happiness or strength. 



82 The College Student and His Problems 

In this matter of observing the Sabbath, as in 
all your college work, it is better to be a little 
too serious than to be a little too frivolous ; it is 
better to hold the reins a little too tightly than to 
be in danger of letting them slip through your 
fingers, or of not holding the reins at all. 



V 

Fkaternities 

Fraternities, or Greek-letter societies, or 
secret societies, are now known in nearly every 
college in this country, and constitute one of the 
most important factors of college life. The resi- 
dent or undergraduate membership of each varies 
from fifteen to twenty-five in number. The older 
and more wealthy of these organizations own 
chapter-houses, which are more or less luxurious 
club-houses, while the members of others rent 
either houses or rooms for common occupancy. 

This coming together of young men of similar 
tastes and purposes is entirely natural, and is to 
be expected in the college as it is in society at 
large. Add the piquancy of secret rites and cere- 
monies, and the comforts of a home, and the 
attractions to fraternity life become very strong. 
A young man who promises to make a good stu- 
dent record, or who for any reason seems a desir- 

83 



84 The College Student and His Problems 

able addition to the charmed circle, finds himself 
almost at once among friends, and establishes 
delightful relations which, often, perhaps gener- 
ally, are of lifelong duration. When, as a gradu- 
ate, he occasionally returns to his alma mater or 
visits another college, he is at once at home again, 
he passes readily to the very penetralia of college 
life, he is easily en rapport with all that is pass- 
ing ; and in many ways he has a decided social 
advantage over fellow-graduates who, as students, 
did not enjoy the comradeship which these organ- 
izations offer and foster. 

Of course, there is another side to all this. 
There are fraternities, and fraternities. The 
character and personnel differ from year to year, 
and in different institutions. It is not at all in- 
frequent that a fraternity is noted in one college 
for its high literary standing, in another for social 
qualities only ; in one college holds the first rank 
in scholarship, and in another bears scarcely a 
passing grade ; is athletic to a fault here, and 
disgustingly effeminate yonder. So, too, it is 
often true that in some institutions fraternities 
absolutely change front with passing years — and 
sometimes with a very few passing years at that. 



Fraternities 85 

It may even happen that a man may find him- 
self with most desirable acquaintances during his 
freshman year, and with most detrimental associ- 
ates in his senior year. As I write I recall a 
fraternity in one of our most renowned colleges, 
which in a very few years passed from an unus- 
ually high moral plane to such depths of degra- 
dation and degeneracy that its chapter was 
withdrawn and its charter broken up by action 
of its own national council. 

It is almost necessarily true that membership 
in a fraternity increases the expenses of college 
life, and at least tends to increase these unduly. 
While alumni are very liberal and generous in 
contributing toward the erection and equipment 
of chapter-houses, some portion of this falls upon 
the undergraduate, and nearly all the expenses 
of maintenance must come out of his pocket. It 
is not easy to be frugal when in company with 
others, some of whose resources are more ample 
than your own ; and " spreads," and receptions, 
and " smokers " do not grow on bushes, to be 
plucked by the empty-handed. So, too, there is 
an expenditure of time — sure to follow the social 
life of these club-houses — which it is almost im- 



86 The College Student and His Problems 

possible wisely to limit or control. Yet many- 
students of highest rank have been most loyal 
and enthusiastic fraternity men. 

You will see, therefore, that you may not easily 
determine your wisest course in this matter. 
You may have strength of character and stand- 
ing, or you may have some inheritance in the 
college, which enables you to choose both your 
time of joining and the fraternity with which you 
will unite. Or it may be that only one society 
will solicit your membership, and that one may 
say, "Now or never." As to this latter it may 
be said, in passing, that if you really succeed in 
your work and show marked strength, the oppor- 
tunity to join will quite surely be offered again ; 
so you may eliminate all anxiety on that score. 
But you are alone, you feel the need of advisers 
and friends, immediate comradeship means much 
to you, and you appreciate recognition and the 
distinction of being sought. Very few can keep 
level heads and cool wits in the midst of all 
the excitement and blandishment of a fraternity 
" rush " ; very few of us older ones can do this in 
later life, when something of the same conditions 
prevails. 



Fraternities 87 

The very wisest course which you can pursue in 
this matter is to refuse absolutely to join or to 
pledge yourself or to commit yourself in any way 
during the first half year ; far better, if your 
moral stamina will stand the stress and strain, 
during the entire first year. This may seem like 
harsh advice, but it is based upon more than 
thirty years of careful and extended observation. 
It is not easy to break away from a fraternity if 
you find you have made a mistake, and once 
within the fraternity it is not easy to avoid men 
who may be anything but agreeable or helpful 
companions. In all but an exceptionally few 
cases you must and will abide by your choice, 
and make the best of it. You are to be more- 
intimate with these society men than with any 
others ; an intimacy which from the very condi- 
tions of fraternity associations has a direct and 
peculiar bearing and influence upon all your after 
life. A man is always known by the company 
he keeps, and you are to keep company with these 
men for at least four of the most important years 
of your existence. It behooves you, therefore, to 
make your choice of these associates with extraor- 
dinary care. 



88 The College Student and His Problems 

In the first place, all the conditions of disci- 
pline, mental and moral, are such that it is far 
better for you to undertake the work of this 
first year entirely alone. Self-reliance, industry, 
fertility of resource, perception, tact and shrewd- 
ness, adaptability : these and other similarly 
desirable qualities and characteristics are devel- 
oped from within, though by outward stress and 
strain, and are jeopardized and weakened, if not 
entirely lost, when one may all too readily turn 
to others for counsel, encouragement, and strength. 
One of your first and most important lessons is 
that of fighting your own battles — and you will 
scarcely learn this if you have a body-guard con- 
tinually at your heels. There is such a thing 
as being coddled by a fraternity, and it is just 
as detrimental as any other form of coddling. 
Responsibility is one of the most successful edu- 
cators, though often a hard taskmaster ; and it 
is not well to be so situated that you may shirk 
responsibility if you chance to feel so inclined. 

Another decided gain is found in waiting : the 
opportunity to secure more complete information 
as to the local status. What manner of men are 
those who form this fraternity ? What is their 



Fraternities 89 

rank and standing in college? What is the life 
of present undergraduate membership, and in 
what way are these men felt in the college 
world? What have graduate members accom- 
plished after leaving college ? What is the 
general attitude of college officers toward fra- 
ternities, and why ? What has been the history 
of fraternities in this institution ? Who are the 
great and notable men whose names appear on 
the rolls of the fraternity annual ? All these 
are questions to which you ought to secure defi- 
nite and satisfactory replies before you move 
forward. Members of other fraternities cannot 
give you this information, even if you are so 
situated as to be able to ask them. Non-frater- 
nity men cannot give it. You must answer j^our 
own questions, and you must take time in which 
to answer them wisely and well. You surely can 
lose nothing by waiting a year, and there is at 
least a chance that you will gain much. If these 
men are worthy of your friendship and you are 
worthy of theirs, this will come out all the more 
clearly as the year passes. If the converse is 
true, you escape even more than you will gain 
if the final decision is favorable. 



90 The College Student and His Problems 

If you wait a year, what then ? Of course, the 
ideal condition would be to have the college 
world an absolute unit, knowing nothing of 
cliques or factions or divisions of any sort, rec- 
ognizing community of interest in all things, 
each sharing in common prosperity because con- 
tributing to it, each solicitous as to the welfare 
of the other, each member of this democratic 
community a direct and positive blessing to each 
other member. But it happens that the world 
is all and quite otherwise ; Christian nations 
contend with pagan and with each other as well ; 
there is strife of creeds in the churches, and of 
parties in the political world ; class makes war 
upon class in social life, and distinctions of rank 
or wealth or association are everywhere mani- 
fest — and the college is in the world and of the 
world. It is no indolent optimism, therefore, 
which as to your final decision bids you accept 
the fraternity, if you are so inclined after this 
year of careful observation, and make the best 
of it. 

In an earlier paragraph of this chapter I have 
indicated briefly what "the best of it" may 
mean. There are both opportunity and responsi- 



Fraternities 91 

bility, and from a proper recognition of each 
may come very desirable results. It is no small 
thing that you have something to say as to the 
general policy or as to the details of its execu- 
tion, that you are charged with some special 
duties in this common life, that you have youi 
share of the burden to carry, even that you must 
pay your share of the common expenses (I have 
always admired the pluck with which some men 
refuse to use any part of their usual allowance 
for these extra expenses, but in some way, either 
in vacations or during leisure hours, earn the 
necessary money by special effort). To get the 
full benefit of these associations, you ought to 
take fraternity life far more seriously than some 
men take it to-day. There should always be a 
very definite purpose to make this pay the largest 
possible returns upon your investment of time 
and money. With generous rivalry, you should 
insist that your associates make every effort to 
keep well at the front in the class room, on the 
athletic field, and in all student undertakings. 
You should study carefully to make your fra- 
ternity one of the very best in the country, your 
chapter the leader of the fraternity. Under your 



92 The College Student and His Problems 

guidance it should become and remain a model 
organization. In all this you must give freely 
of your time and talents ; but the returns are 
immediate and large. The experience in execu- 
tive work, the record in successful administra- 
tion, the development of power and capacity on 
your own part — all this is exceedingly valuable. 
I know of more than one man high in the coun- 
cils of the nation to-day whose training in the 
councils of his fraternity laid the foundations for 
his present success, more than one whose brill- 
iant conduct of business affairs began in his 
college days — men whose practice then gave 
them the suppleness and ease and confidence of 
present movement. Take fraternity life seri- 
ously, then, that you may secure from it the very 
best results, the very highest rewards. 

On the other hand, do not take it too seriously, 
as some college men take it. It is not the only 
factor in college life, nor is it the most important. 
There are other fraternities, and other fraternity 
men. Wisdom will not die with you fellows ; 
nor is it a lasting disgrace to be distanced by a 
man who does not wear a pin like your own. 
Much that is noteworthy in this world has been 



Fraternities 93 

accomplished by men who wore no Greek pins at 
all. You should have such a sense of perspec- 
tive that all these things appear in proper and 
true proportions. You should never permit the 
organization to overshadow or dwarf the individ- 
ual, which is the constantly threatening evil of all 
organization. You should have many acquaint- 
ances, and at least a few friends, entirely outside 
of your fraternity circle. No rivalry between 
fraternities should ever become so fierce as to lead 
you to consent to any trickery, chicanery, or 
fraud ; or to make you part company with tried 
companions and friends. Self-control and a gen- 
erous interpretation of the motives and actions of 
others are exceedingly desirable in this world, 
and your fraternity relations should do much to 
develop and establish both. But this will be 
impossible if you make mountains out of mole- 
hills, if fraternity politics become more important 
than national issues, and your personal success in 
some college campaign is of more absorbing inter- 
est than civic righteousness. Because of an old- 
time interfraternity quarrel, two large-minded, 
warm-hearted, wonderfully efficient men have 
wasted their time and strength for years in a per- 



94 The College Student and His Problems 

sonal feud, which at times has seriously affected 
the interests and marred the success of more than 
one really great undertaking. Nothing could be 
more pitiful or absurd or more pitifully absurd 
than this. This is an excellent example of what 
I mean by taking your fraternity relations too 
seriously. 

All at it and all the time at it wins, surely. 
But not every undertaking is worth all your time 
and all your strength. Certainly your fraternity 
will not be worth this. You are to get from it 
all you can ; but you cannot possibly get from it 
all that you need. Your first duty is always to 
your college work ; your greatest opportunity is 
that which the college itself presents ; the great- 
est drafts upon your time and strength must 
always be in these directions. But there is an 
unconscious education received by all who are 
open to the influences about them — and in this 
unconscious education the close relations of your 
fraternity will play an important part. Compan- 
ionship has a great influence upon our lives. The 
educational effect of daily intercourse can hardly 
be overstated. " He that walketh with wise men 
shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be 



■k 



Fraternities 95 

destroyed." Few men are strong enough to 
resist the demoralizing influence of evil associates. 
But the converse of all this is true ; and every 
man knows that not only his pleasure but much 
of his success depends upon his choice of friends. 
With all this before you, be sure to make a wise 
choice of friends ; be sure that they are worthy to 
enter into your own life, to share your confidence 
and esteem. 

Because it is scarcely possible for you to make 
this wise choice and to determine this worthiness 
at the very opening of your college career, you are 
advised to wait at least a half year before estab- 
lishing any such hard and fast relations as those 
of the Greek-letter societies. 



VI 

Athletics 

With entrance examinations safely and cred- 
itably passed, the course selected, and what may 
be called domestic and social relations fairly es- 
tablished, the student turns naturally enough to 
other relations, which may stand as the by- 
products of education. This does not mean that 
they are not quite as important as any other rela- 
tions or activities, that they are to be considered 
as entirely of secondary importance in the usual 
meaning of that phrase, rather only that they are 
not the first to receive consideration. 

Now that the last sentence is written, it seems 
not quite true after all — at least, not quite true 
just at present — concerning athletics. Many a 
lad determines his college to-day by its athletic 
record, and it is hardly too much to say that suc- 
cess on the field or on the track or in the gymna- 
sium has much to do with the personnel of every 

96 



Athletics 97 

freshman class. This is true from two points of 
view ; many a man choosing his college because 
of the pleasure and pride which he expects to feel 
in the succession of athletic victories (conversely, 
*'I do not care to tie up with a college which 
gets licked every time," said a sub-freshman 
recently) ; and the older men in not a few col- 
leges reaching out after fellows who have made 
something of a record while in the academy or 
preparatory school. If, therefore, you have to 
your credit an extra high jump, or a fine cross- 
country run, or a good pitching curve, or a few 
successful kicks to goal, you have heard already 
from at least one college, even if you have not 
been importuned by several. 

The craving for physical exercise is wholly nat- 
ural and exceedingly wholesome, and should be 
intelligently satisfied. The constant bodily activ- 
ity of babies and of very young children is the 
result of a most admirable provision for their 
well-being. These movements come under more 
control as years increase, and when middle life is 
reached are only too apt to be entirely subordi- 
nated to intellectual activity and perhaps even 
lost by reason of continued sedentary occupation. 



98 The College Student and His Problems 

That this loss is a serious one, never made good 
by the supposed gain in time, and that it is a 
positive menace to all forms of activity, even to 
life itself, we are just coming to understand. 
Our first cousins, the English, have always been 
wiser than ourselves in these matters — a wisdom 
which has resulted in an unusual prolongation of 
physical powers and in a very remarkable conser- 
vation of mental strength and activity — and we 
are now fairly committed to a like policy. The 
increasing interest in all forms of outdoor life and 
sport, and especially in everything in which men 
and women in middle life — even in later life — 
may participate, is full of hope and promise for 
the second century of this nation. The Saturday 
half-holiday, made almost universal, is proof of the 
fact that the shrewdest business men have come 
to understand that good work and good play go 
together, and that the latter is practically insep- 
arable from the former. It is a great pity that 
the administrative officers of some institutions 
of learning are not blessed with the same wisdom, 
the same common sense, in these matters. 

There is a greater need of a sound body and of 
^he outdoor life which will keep it sound, than 



Athletics 99 

ever before, because men and women are con- 
stantly undergoing greater stress and strain. It 
may be true, in a certain rather limited sense, 
that it is not more difficult to close successfully a 
business transaction in millions than in tens of 
thousands, when we have once accustomed our- 
selves to think in millions ; but it is also true that 
to think in millions the bow must be strung much 
more taut, must be drawn more often, and kept 
ready for use more continually, and almost never 
springs back quite straight when the string is 
loosened. Moreover, the mind which succeeds 
in mastering the conditions and problems of to- 
day must be a large mind, a world mind, with 
firmer grasp, with keener insight, with more alert 
perceptions, with greater tenacity of purpose yet 
greater shiftiness — adjustability, flexibility, fer- 
tility of resources — than the general or average 
mind of the past ; and this means a very positive 
and imperative demand for better digestion, 
steadier nerves, deeper breathing, and greater 
general bodily health and strength. Very signif- 
icant is the question now almost invariably asked 
concerning any applicant for any position, " Has 
he any physical weakness or defect?" — since, 

L.ofG. 



100 The College Student and His Problems 

with exceedingly rare exceptions, a person with 
any physical weakness or defect simply cannot 
endure the strain and satisfactorily meet the 
demands of the modern business or professional 
world. Both as a hard student — and I hope you 
are to be one — and as a successful man after 
graduation, your brain will demand a very large 
supply of rich blood — that red blood which is 
worth so much more than any "blue blood" on 
earth! — and you can only secure this by a full 
and free and helpful play of all organic life. 

All this is so true, and a sound body is so 
necessary, that I hope you will not enroll in a 
college which has not a well-equipped gymnasium 
under the control of a thoroughly competent and 
expert director. If the college toward which 
under any influence whatever you are turning or 
are being turned is not thus equipped, it is due 
to one or more of several reasons, any one of 
which may well cause you to pause and to con- 
sider carefully your decision. Either the presi- 
dent is not large enough or modern enough 
to appreciate the desirability and the necessity 
of physical education — in which case he is an 
incompetent executive ; or the members of 



Athletics 101 

the faculty are narrow and selfish and prevent 
expenditures in this direction — which simply 
determines that they cannot render any very 
acceptable or helpful service to youth ; or the 
alumni and friends of the institution either can- 
not or do not furnish sufficient resources for the 
maintenance of such work — which is a reason- 
ably sure warning that the college is financially 
weak and ill equipped on all lines of work, and 
does not retain the lively interest and abiding 
confidence of its graduates. You ought not to 
be connected with such an institution, from the 
standpoint of either your well-being or your 
pride. 

If work in the gymnasium is optional, — it 
ought to be required, at least during the first two 
years of residence, — present yourself to the direc- 
tor at the earliest moment possible, ask for a 
complete physical examination with its accom- 
panying chart or detailed report, and enroll for 
regular class work. It should be understood 
that this work is to prepare you for games and 
other outdoor exercise, or is to take the place of 
these during the winter or in bad weather ; but 
you should never permit this to supplant outdoor 



102 The College Student and His Problems 

life. Gymnastics cannot be accepted as a com- 
plete substitute for the more natural and usual 
forms of exercise ; nor can they ever take the 
place of the hearty, wholesome, normal interest 
aroused by competitive sjjorts. But class train- 
ing and discipline are very essential to all-round 
development, and often work wonderful cures of 
special weaknesses or make good hitherto unsus- 
pected defects. Moreover, all special work and 
service, such as is involved in holding a place on 
any of the college teams or in any undertaking 
to lower individual records, make such a serious 
demand upon all bodily powers that great care is 
necessary to prevent permanent injury. Briefly, 
if you are not much of an athlete you certainly 
need the gymnasium ; if you are an athlete of 
high repute, an entirely proper and even laudable 
ambition, you need the gymnasium even more. 

I have warned you against a college which has 
no definite course in physical education ; now I 
urge you to beware of an institution which is so 
one-sided as to take interest in athletics in but 
one direction. Students have a very incomplete 
and inadequate idea of sport if they fancy it is a 
scheme in which nine or eleven men do all the 



Athletics 103 

work, and tlie rest of the student world looks on. 
In fact, one of the most serious charges which can 
be brought against athletics is the amount of 
time, the aggregate hours, wasted and worse than 
wasted in simply looking on during the game, or 
in talking about it either before or after it is 
played. The atmosphere of a college in which 
such athletics prevail is anything but helpful or 
stimulating. The field of sports is wide, and the 
ways of securing outdoor life and exercise are 
varied. One man has not the time in which 
to excel in all or even in many, and many men 
cannot hope for preeminence in any ; but active 
personal and direct participation should be as 
general and widespread as possible. Football, 
tennis, baseball, golf, lacrosse, rowing, all forms 
of track work, cycling, cross-country runs, basket- 
ball — these, and more, surely give large oppor- 
tunity and incentive. If for any reason you may 
not take part in any of these, there is still left 
that best of all simple exercise — walking. 
Nothing has ever been discovered or invented or 
proposed which quite equals this, for all forms of 
student life. It is a sufficient exercise, it is in- 
expensive, it requires little or no preliminary 



104 The College Student and His Problems 

training and practically no special equipment, 
and it can be taken at any odd moments of the 
day. Not that you should be content with odd 
moments, if you can possibly give more time ; 
but the odd moments are far better than nothing. 
Four miles a day in the aggregate, made up of 
the routes covered from your rooms to your 
boarding house and return, and the regular 
movement to class room and laboratories three 
times each day, are better than nothing ; but by 
no means equal four continuous miles of brisk 
walk in (say) a single hour. It is true that there 
is some loss of time — you could make the four 
miles much more quickly on your wheel ; but the 
loss is far more than equalled by the gain which 
comes from a longer stay in the open air. It is 
the open air which refreshes, stimulates, and re- 
builds, after all, though movement undoubtedly 
adds to the benefits received. Not much is 
gained by a mere stroll or saunter, there is not 
enough exercise in this ; but this is better than 
nothing, is better even than exclusive gymnasium 
work. There is a certain college in which there 
was once a student song, the chorus of which 
ran: — 



Athletics 105 

" O walking is good exercise, good exercise, good exercise, 
O walking is good exercise, /or 
Prexy tells us so ! " 

Whether the students still join heartily in the 
chorus as of old, I do not know ; but advancing 
years have not changed " Prexy's " opinion. 

You should always keep in mind the true end 
of all athletics, which is a proper combination 
of recreation and physical exercise. Everything 
else is entirely incidental and should be regarded 
as of wholly secondary importance — even if tol- 
erated at all. It seems quite impossible for 
some people to distinguish between athletics 
proper and standing around and gossiping about 
the players and the games, and betting on the 
results ; and many students who never do any- 
thing except look on, gossip, and bet, will talk 
most loudly about their interest in outdoor 
sports. Yet the general and hearty interest of 
the entire college world in the success of its 
representatives is natural and helpful, and ought 
to be encouraged in every proper way and in 
every lawful manifestation. One of the most 
delightful and favorable results of all athletics 
is the stimulus which they give to social rela- 



106 The College Student and His Problems 

tions. The close personal contact between the 
men on the teams, and the sense of mutual de- 
pendence created by and through team work ; 
the newly awakened institutional pride, or the 
large increase of this by reason of intercollegi- 
ate contests ; the necessary democracy of the 
field, and of the crowds in attendance — all 
these establish and maintain a social status 
which is in every way desirable and helpful. 
You ought to play your part in all this, in order 
that you may receive your share of the benefits. 
Nothing will bring you more quickly in touch with 
your fellow-students than will this. It is one 
of the ways in which you can show your inter- 
est in communal affairs, your willingness to give 
of your time and strength, at least, to advance 
the common interests and the general welfare. 
You ought to do this "for the good of the 
cause," for the stimulus which you will receive 
from such active and intelligent participation, 
and you need not hesitate to do it because one 
of its results will surely be that you will be 
known and remembered as a "good fellow." If 
you enter upon any scheme of life simply be- 
cause of the possible benefits to be received by 



Athletics 107 

yourself, you may be sure that sooner or later 
— generally sooner than later — your selfishness 
will become apparent, and will be the fly in the 
ointment. But that need not cause you to 
forego the natural and inevitable and pleasur- 
able results of a hearty manifestation of true 
public spirit. This is needed in the college 
world quite as much as in the world at large, 
and its exercise and development during the 
years of student life form a most excellent prep- 
aration for the larger life to come. I have 
rarely known a man who had made a favorable 
impression upon his college in this respect, to fail 
of almost immediate and helpful recognition when 
he entered the outer world. Conversely, I have 
almost never known a man to secure the confidence 
and esteem of his fellows after leaving college, if 
he had not won the esteem and regard of his 
college mates during his student life. Athletics 
furnish one of the very best means for the develop- 
ment and manifestation of true social instincts. 

Nor are many of the finer individual charac- 
teristics without very definite stimulus. It may 
be that bravery is a matter of instinct, and de- 
pends largely upon natural temperament; but 



108 The College Student and His Problems 

courage, fortitude, and resolution are capable of 
development and training. One of the very 
best results of all physical education is this, 
that it kills fear. The man who knows little 
or nothing of his physical powers and possibili- 
ties is always timid. Not until he finds out 
that after all it does not hurt so very much 
to get hurt, not until he has his nerves and 
muscles under full control, will he face danger 
and possible suffering without flinching. Within 
the circle of athletics are experiences which 
give a man that courage which is serviceable 
at all times and under all conditions, — a cour- 
age which may almost rise to the heights of 
valor, and which will surely reach that height in 
later life and in larger matters ; resolution, 
which persistently holds the ground that has 
been intelligently chosen ; fortitude, which en- 
dures calmly whatever pain may result from any 
given action. All these are worth much to the 
man in the struggles of the commercial or pro- 
fessional world, and some of the very best tim- 
ber has been fashioned in this way. It was 
Wellington who said that Waterloo was won on 
the athletic fields of English schools. 



Athletics 109 

Not only is courage promoted by outdoor 
sports, but self-control comes to be almost second 
nature. No quality is more necessary or helpful, 
and with many men nothing is more difficult to 
acquire. Yet, in any undertaking, the man who. 
is easily rattled, who cannot keep his head, who 
is not ready to meet an emergency, who is not 
fertile in resources — this man is sure to fail. 
No training is more helpful in this matter than 
that received in athletics. A man whose tem- 
per flares up, hot and consuming, either upon 
slight pretext or under great provocation, can- 
not be trusted on any team. Just when he 
needs to be most cool and reserved he is sure 
to play wild and lose the day. In personal re- 
lations, in team work, in the stress and strain 
of the game itself, it is imperative that a man 
should keep cool. He must see clearly, hear 
accurately, determine quickly, and, coordinating 
all his senses and powers — act instantly. Mind 
and body, muscle and nerve, must be well in 
hand — capable of immediate and efficient re- 
sponse to any demand. The responsibility is 
often great, the contest always hot, the strain 
is ever severe ; and under these conditions men 



110 The College Student and His Problems 

are wrought out as with forge and hammer and 
anvil. Intelligent interest in sport, loyalty to 
the institution and to one's fellows, lawful am- 
bition for success and even for personal pre- 
eminence, — all these make men willing to 
undergo discipline which would otherwise seem 
impossible. Yet only by such training may men 
hope for the highest forms of self-control. 

Nor is it any small gain that you are also 
taught to be unselfish and fair. I am not ad- 
vocating athletics as the richest garden for the 
growth of all the Christian virtues ; but there 
is great productive power in its soil and warmth. 
The success of the team becomes more desirable 
than the success of any individual member of it. 
Many a man willingly abandons a desirable 
place because a better man has been developed 
or has been found. Often a man is called to 
play in a comparatively inferior position where 
there is little or no chance to make a brilliant 
record. The honor of the college is placed be- 
fore the honoring of any student, and this is 
gladly accepted by all. Peculiarly unselfish are 
the second nines or teams, the men who put 
themselves on the rack, in every sense of the 



Athletics 111 

word, and publicly acknowledge their inferi- 
ority, day after day, in order that better men 
may become still more efficient by practising 
with and upon these " seconds," and that men 
already well known and popular may become 
still more famous and acceptable. It would be 
difficult to find a better illustration of self- 
abnegation, even though due credit is given for 
a desire to win a place among the firsts for next 
year. As to fairness, admitting all the faults 
of college sports, and the justness of much ad- 
verse criticism, it certainly remains true that 
the average American boy plays fair, discourages 
any other course, and would rather lose a game 
than win by foul means. You will find gener- 
ally that trickery is not countenanced in college, 
that a very sane and wholesome moral senti- 
ment obtains in the long run, and that there is 
an increasing determination that a man shall 
play like a gentleman, play he to win or to 
lose. 

All this tends strongly to advance good fellow- 
ship, comradeship — with all its attending en- 
joyments and very positive benefits. "For he 
to-day that sheds his blood with me, shall be 



112 The College Student and His Problems 

my brother," said Shakespeare's favorite prince 
and king ; and the men who have served their 
college and their fellow-students on many a 
hard-fought field will not soon forget each 
other. The distinction between them, if any 
exists, becomes one of sheer merit, clearly and 
universally recognized. All that is fortuitous 
disappears. There is a very strict application of 
the motto " from each according to his ability, 
to each according to his deserts." Men who 
work together in this spirit, who share each 
other's failures and successes, who endure hard- 
ship in a common cause, and who have become 
brave, unselfish, and fair, come into a compan- 
ionship hardly known elsewhere, unless it be in 
the army, or in mission work in foreign fields, 
or possibly in unusually close relationship in 
great and long-continued commercial undertak- 
ings. Even the men who enjoy outdoor life 
together in a much quieter way come to recog- 
nize in nature a common loving mother, and so 
are drawn close to each other. I hope you will 
not permit any less worthy way of passing time 
to cause you to lose those delightful friendships, 
many of which are of lifelong duration. 



Athletics 113 

It is quite impossible to understand how a 
fellow can experience all this and continue 
pessimistic, crabbed, morbid. For some reason, 
as yet not well understood, there is a tendency 
toward these characteristics among students, 
especially among those who are in the first two 
callow years. They do not quite reach the point 
where they " distrust all men and despise all 
women," but the world is very hollow and false 
to them, and there are apples of Sodom every- 
where. Sometimes this morbidness goes no far- 
ther than a general withdrawal from college 
life, an unnatural seclusiveness, possibly a blind 
devotion to texts and to marks. Now a fellow 
who keeps no other company than himself is 
not in the best of company, to say the least, 
and by his isolation he fails of a large half of 
his education. To all such men, interest in ath- 
letics is peculiarly valuable. The fresh air 
blows the cobwebs out of the corners of their 
brains, the sunlight sweetens them, and physical 
activity stirs their blood and quickens all their 
processes of assimilation — there is more spirit- 
ual misery and original sin in imperfect diges- 
tion than in most human hearts. Like Saul 



114 The College Student and His Problems 

of old, they come out of the " stuff," finally, and 
sometimes in the end they stand head and shoul- 
ders above their fellows. 

To all this, I think, should be added the pure 
joy of success ; of victory honorably won, and 
generally won in the open, before all men (and be- 
fore some women), and immediately crowned with 
hearty and even vociferous approval and applause. 
That successful home run ; that wonderful exhi- 
bition of batting, with three men on bases ; that 
swift upward leap and sure catch, which saved 
the day ; that sudden burst through the line, 
or the long run around the end and down the 
field to goal with the pigskin safe under your 
arm ; that magnificent spurt at the end of the 
dash ; that answer to coach and cockswain which 
sent the shell well to the front ; these, and more, 
under rare skies, with flags waving and students 
marching and singing and cheering, and the 
great, indulgent, and warm-hearted public trying 
hard to understand it all and expressing its 
pleasure and excitement in a most inspiring 
way ; and more than all and best of all (you 
are not half a man otherwise) the "dearest 
girl in the world " (for the time being at 



Athletics 115 

least) standing on tiptoe, with sparkling eyes 
and flying tresses and fluttering ribbons, add- 
ing her applause to all that which is thunder- 
ing in your ears — these are moments which are 
worth living for, which give positive inspi- 
ration to greater endeavor in more important 
fields, which are never forgotten. May you 
have many of them, and be the better man for 
them all. 

There is no better nor finer example of all 
that I have written than that given by the 
President of these United States. President 
Roosevelt was a weakly boy (but not effeminate), 
and at Harvard did not distinguish himself in 
any form of athletics. But he took part in 
all forms, practically and actively participating 
as far as his strength and time would permit, 
and always in the most true sportsman's spirit. 
He set himself patiently and intelligently to the 
task of securing a sound body to sustain a sound 
mind ; and now he has remarkable strength, 
suppleness, and health, sustaining and invigorat- 
ing a brilliant mind. Undoubtedly some of his 
most admirable qualities — honor, courage, alert- 
ness, energy — owe not their origin but their 



116 The College Student and His Problems 

development to his mode of life, to his incessant 
bodily activity in the open air. 

This, then, is the conclusion of the whole 
matter. Put yourself in the hands of an expert 
physical director, and determine your physical 
disabilities and limitations. Prepare for outdoor 
life and sports by systematic and intelligent in- 
door training. Then remember that athletics 
have been very well defined as healthy exercise in 
manly and necessary pastimes, and that they are 
never to be considered an end, but are to be 
wisely and properly subordinated to your life- 
work. Participate personally and practically 
whenever and wherever you can ; fight to a 
finish, every time, any semblance of profession- 
alism and all forms of gambling ; play like a 
gentleman, not for the sake of victory, but for 
the sake of the game ; win like a gentleman, 
Avithout obtrusive conceit ; and lose like a gen- 
tleman, without the whimpers and reproaches 
and excuses of a cad. Go carefully in your first 
year in order that you may avoid overstrain of 
any sort, and may not be drawn unduly away from 
your studies ; and lighten your athletic work 
in the last year, in order that you may do your 



Athletics 117 

closing educational work with full credit, and 
that you may give the younger fellows a chance 
on the field. 

You will never regret such a course as this. 
You will always regret anything other or less 
than this. 



VII 

Other College Enterprises 

Just as there are at least a dozen forms of 
outdoor life for your leisure moments, each more 
or less tempting and each more or less helpful, 
so there are quite as many indoor enterprises 
which are attractive, or which appeal to your 
sense of public spirit, or come to you in the form 
of a public service to which you are in duty 
bound to give some heed. The very danger 
of these lies in their multiplicity and in their 
attractiveness. If you happen to have a " voice " 
and enjoy music, or have had some experience 
in private theatricals, or find something of the 
orator in your composition, or enjoy discussion 
and debate, or have any fad of any kind, you 
will be immediately in demand. If you chance 
to be a brilliant and versatile fellow, the demand 
will become both plural and well-nigh imperative. 
In all college undertakings the conditions are 

118 



Other College Enterprises 119 

very much as you will liud them in the outer 
world, after graduation — and this is one reason 
why college life and experience are so advanta- 
geous ; and the first and most easily noted of 
these conditions is that competent, faithful, work- 
ing members are rare in any organization, and 
that those carrying the heavy end of the load 
are always looking anxiously for assistance. 
Further, although you may not act with unmixed 
motives, there is genuine pleasure and very 
permissible pride in being able to bring things 
to pass. In later life you will feel a glow and a 
tingle when you realize that a dead literary 
society dated its renaissance from the night when 
you joined ; that the choral union took on new 
life under your leadership ; that the most brill- 
iant successes of the dramatic club were during 
your regime ; that when you were managing 
editor, the college paper was not only bright 
and clean, but was out of debt for the very first 
time in its long existence ; that the year in which 
the luck turned in our favor, in the intercol- 
legiate debate, was the year in which, for the 
first time, you took the platform. The approval 
and the congratulations of your fellows were very 



120 The College Student and His Problems 

sweet to you, — really, nothing since has been 
sweeter, — and you were fully warranted in 
enjoying it all. 

Yet it may be — it is not often so, however, 
and it is never necessarily so — that you pur- 
chased all this at the direct expense of your 
regular work — in a certain sense, your more 
legitimate work. It is against such an unwar- 
ranted and foolish waste of opportunity that 
you need to be warned. In all these enterprises 
do what you can, of course ; but be sure to do 
no more than your regular work will permit. 
There are many interesting things in this life 
in which even a very large man may decline to 
be interested. This does not mean, necessarily, 
that he is short sighted, or selfish, or disloyal, or 
lacking in public spirit ; it simply means that 
one man cannot be actively and efficiently inter- 
ested in everything, nor indeed in very many 
things. As in athletics, you must use discretion 
in determining what you will undertake. 

Fortunately, both for the various organizations 
and" for yourself, conditions favor your under- 
taking more than one of these enterprises. 
Literary societies meet but once each week, at 



Other College Enterprises 121 

the most. For both music and the drama there 
is a season. Intercollegiate debates happen but 
once or twice a year. The college press, like the 
poor, is always with you, and doubtless is more 
exacting than any other student undertaking. 
Once fairly in that harness, and there is little 
rest during your year of service. But aside 
from this, one may serve in several capacities, 
if the demand does not become too continuous 
or too often repeated. 

As I write, there is on my desk the student 
year-book of one of our greatest colleges. 
Turning the pages quickly, and without regard 
to importance, I find the following organizations 
or associations mentioned : — 

The organization which brings out the year- 
book itself — no small task and no unimportant 
service, though rarely appreciated by either 
officers or students ; the class organizations as 
such, which if successfully and efficiently main- 
tained cost some few students much time and 
thought and active effort ; seven college publi- 
cations, four of which are managed by students 
exclusively, and three of which unite officers 
with students in editorial work ; twenty-two 



122 The College Student and His Problems 

fraternities, the characteristics of which we have 
already discussed ; twenty -two student clubs or 
societies — of which seven are literary in char- 
acter, five are devoted to music, four are 
specifically limited to debate, two are strictly 
technical, one is purely social, two are out-of- 
door clubs, one is the Y. M. C. A. — which 
ought to be the great clearing-house for all 
religious, ethical, and social student life ; and 
sixteen athletic organizations. Of course this 
is a rather unusual record of student activity 
and of the diversity of students' interests ; and 
is quite a sure sign of a large, healthful, and 
prosperous institution. But proportions some- 
thing or very much like these will be found in 
every American college which is not absolutely 
moribund. 

Now, if you will turn back to the schedule 
which we made out for the work of each day, 
you will find that the margin of time for these 
diversified interests is really very slight. One 
evening each week may be spared easily enough ; 
and, with unusual care as to the intervening 
time, another evening may occasionally be taken 
with entire safety, except during such special 



Other College Enterprises 123 

periods as examination week. Beyond this it 
surely is neither wise nor safe to go. There is 
always the unexpected, the emergency, to meet 
and care for ; and this averages no small expen- 
diture of time. The decisive factor, however, 
should be this : that you are not to undertake 
what you cannot do reasonably well, since any- 
thing short of this is a positive injury not only to 
the enterprise but to yourself. One of your first 
lessons, therefore, will be to say no — very kindly, 
very wisely, very reasonably, but very firmly. 

Properly used, all these organizations will 
minister to your present development, and to 
your future usefulness, and some of them seem 
almost imperative to that. By this is meant 
that there are some experiences which are almost 
conditions precedent to your future success, and 
which cannot be secured outside of active mem- 
bership in one or more of these societies. In a 
country of free and democratic public life, like 
our own, that citizen is surely lacking in effi- 
ciency who cannot stand on his feet before his 
fellow-citizens, and say his say in a manner that 
will invite attention and will gain at least a 
respectful hearing. Public discussion is the 



124 The College Student and His Problems 

very life of the republic, and each man ought 
to be able to play his part. So, too, it often 
happens that one is called to preside over some 
deliberative body — of any form or importance, 
from a small committee to a public convention ; 
and he needs to have at least a fair knowledge 
of parliamentary usage and of the rules govern- 
ing such assemblies. Nowhere is there better 
training preparatory to this than is to be found 
in the various debates, discussions, and business 
meetings of the college literary societies, when 
they are carefully conducted ; and many a man 
owes to this part of his student life his success 
on the floor or with the gavel. Nothing is more 
pitiful than a gathering in which everything 
drags and goes halting for want of competent 
leadership, with friction and irritation and loss 
of time and costly blundering and general ineffi- 
ciency. Some of our most ready public speakers 
and most brilliant parliamentarians have laid the 
foundations of their careers in these college or- 
ganizations, and speak with warmest apprecia- 
tion of this miniature field of intellectual strife. 
Hon. John Spooner, one of the most brilliant 
men on the floor of the United States Senate, 



Other College Enterprises 125 

often refers to his experiences in his college 
literary societies and debating unions as the be- 
ginning of his public life ; and his college mates 
recall with interest and with pride his early 
preeminence in these undertakings. Nor is he 
alone in this appreciation of the value of college 
organizations. 

There is nothing in the curriculum which 
can take the place of this ; even though (as in 
some institutions) there is regular work offered 
in forensics, under competent instruction. Such 
work is very desirable and very helpful, and 
should be carried whenever possible ; but 
it can no more take the place of the unre- 
strained and free play of all mental faculties 
and powers during some debate or discussion 
in a student society, than formal indoor gym- 
nastics can hope to supplant outdoor games 
carried on with all the enthusiasm and spon- 
taneity of youth. 

The work upon the college press, if properly 
performed, has unusual value. It is worth 
much to acquire that facility of expression which 
comes from much "pushing the pencil." It is 
entirely true that a careless and slovenly style 



126 The College Student and His Problems 

may be the result; but this is a misuse of an 
opportunity and an abuse of a privilege. To 
make even reasonably careful selection of new 
items, to determine the make-up of each issue, 
to conduct a department successfully, to discuss 
college affairs with some sense of perspective, 
to secure from others and from the right people 
the more formal articles and communications, 
to maintain proper relations with the college 
authorities without losing ground with the stu- 
dents, to make the paper really effective in 
college life and for college interests, — this is 
to be a successful editor, reporter, contributor, 
solicitor, and manager all in one. This cannot 
be accomplished without an experience and a 
training of the greatest possible value. One of 
the foremost financiers of this country has re- 
cently said that he owed his success as an organ- 
izer and his tact in bringing others to take part 
in his great financial undertakings to his train- 
ing and experience as a solicitor for advertise- 
ments and subscribers, when connected with the 
press of his college; and no small number of 
those who are most prominent to-day in the field 
of current journalism began their work in the 



Other College Enterprises 127 

same way. All this is but another proof of the 
microcosmic character, the little-worldness, of 
the college, and of the fact that human nature 
is much the same wherever encountered. 

The departmental societies, or clubs, are purely 
technical in the character of their work, and are 
to be accepted as a means of enlarging the gen- 
eral resources of the college and of deepening 
and enriching the curriculum. It is a piece of 
good fortune, for instance, to be able to secure 
in this way an hour's discussion, even once each 
month, of the more recent magazine articles 
bearing upon the work of a given department; 
or to have reports made of the latest results of 
research ; or to know how each student of some 
special phase of your work is succeeding, and 
what his experiences have been since you last 
met. The discussions in these volunteer sem- 
inars, the close contact secured with both in- 
structors and fellow-students, give to all the 
work a freshness and vitality which is scarcely 
attainable in any other way. Membership in 
these organizations is generally deferred to the 
junior year; that is, till the student has dis- 
played special aptitude for the work and is 



128 The College Student and His Problems 

sufficiently advanced really to profit by it. In 
fact, in many of the larger colleges and uni- 
versities there has come this quite natural order 
of membership and work : the literary societies 
during freshman and sophomore years, with 
intercollegiate contests for junior and senior 
years ; and departmental clubs and societies 
during the last two years of the course, or dur- 
ing senior year and as graduate students. This 
is a very natural as well as a very wise division 
of activity. 

I wish to add a word of warm commendation of 
the musical and dramatic organizations. If you 
have no ear for music, if you cannot sing, if you 
have not even reasonable mastery of any musical 
instrument, then this paragraph is not for you. 
You are to be pitied, since you are always to be 
denied one of the pu^st^nd highest pleasures of 
life. But if you have a delight in harmony, and 
can add even a little in any way whatever to the 
volume of either chorus or orchestra, by all means 
find time for this. The returns in enjoyment, in 
companionship, in keen delight, will more than 
repay you for any sacrifice which membership 
may reasonably demand. There is no satisfaction 



Other College Enterprises 129 

quite so great, no memory quite so lasting, as that 
of a winter's work over some symphony, the 
earnest attempt to interpret a master ; or the 
long evenings spent in the study of an oratorio, 
or upon mixed programmes. If you are able to 
do no more than take part in class " sings," or in 
the less formal college songs by a few who have 
met casually under the trees or by some fireside, do 
that. Of all the memories of my own college 
days none are more distinct or more thoroughly 
enjoyable than those of the evenings of the last 
month of the academic year, when so frequently 
twenty or thirty or even fifty of us would happen 
together in some favored spot after supper (as the 
third meal of the day was called then) and, 
guided by the glow of our leader's cigar, which he 
used as a conductor's baton, for an hour or more 
sing the old, old songs v^^-i^^d so well. When can 
we ever forget the IdSt gatherihg^ of each senior 
class, late on the afternoon of baccalaureate Sun- 
day, under the huge campus trees, with a fair 
June sky already flushing with approaching sun- 
set, within a cordon of other classmen and with 
possibly four or five hundred visitors and 
villagers as uninvited but welcomed guests — 



130 The College Student and Ris Problems 

when the hymn books were brought over from 
the chapel, and for two hours the air was full of 
the sweet melodies of familiar tunes. These are 
experiences which you ought to share, events in 
which you ought to take part, and memories 
which should be your own through all your 
life. 

As for private or student theatricals, under 
wise guidance and skilled direction they are 
exceedingly helpful to the participants in giving 
ease of movement and both bodily and mental 
assurance before an audience ; and they add much 
to the pleasure of the student body and of the 
friends of the institution. In them again you 
will find the satisfaction, often the keen delight, 
which comes from direct cooperation with your 
fellows, from a close companionship in a united 
effort for a common end. Such opportunities are 
not to be neglected or ignored. They furnish 
precisely what the world is more or less con- 
sciously seeking every day — helpful, inspiring 
contact between man and man. 

With regard to all these organizations, there 
are just two general principles to be observed. 
First, do not be a deadhead in any of these 



Other College Enterprises 131 

enterprises. If you join, do so with a determina- 
tion to give rather than to receive — a determina- 
tion, by the way, which is always rewarded by 
the very richest personal returns : " there is that 
scattereth and increaseth yet more . . . and he 
that watereth shall be watered also himself." Be 
loyal, intelligently active, wisely promoting the 
interests of the association. Let this be a part 
of your education in methods, what may be called 
your normal training in practical affairs, which is 
to give you both zeal and understanding in that 
public service of which every worthy citizen 
ought to render his full share, and a tithe over for 
good measure or to make up the shortage of 
some less public spirited man. We still need, in 
this country, much versatility, ease of movement, 
readiness of adjustment — and this can only come 
with practice. Moreover, you are still unknown 
to yourself ; and you can only discover the best 
that is in you by giving your faculties and powers 
free play in several directions, — not carelessly, 
ignorantly, thoughtlessly, but with much definite- 
ness of purpose, keeping yourself entirely safe 
from mental or social vagabondage. To wander 
aimlessly, to become a " jiner," simply to dabble 



132 TJie College Student and His Problems 

in many things — this is to become shiftless rather 
than shifty ; and there is as wide a difference 
between the two as between darkness and day- 
light. 

Second, do well, thoroughly well, all which 
you undertake ; and undertake no more than you 
can do well. There are groanings unspeakable 
in every quarter of the known earth because 
•of work but half done, tasks but half performed, 
promises but half kept, enterprises carried in a 
most slovenly manner, calculations utterly lacking 
exactness, plans without method, schemes which 
trust to luck, a race which is run with entire 
negligence at the start and with no clear percep- 
tion of the goal. For the sake of your own 
future, then, compel yourself to prepare carefully 
for every function. Never undertake a leading 
part relying upon your "general information." 
That may pass muster when you engage in gen- 
eral and informal discussion, but not elsewhere. 
If you are to read a paper, try to make it the best 
paper of the season. If you are to debate, inform 
yourself broadly and accurately. If you accept 
responsibility for one of the college papers, make 
it clean, bright, newsy, competent, and thoroughly 



Other College Enterprises 133 

reliable — or drop it. And so on, to the end of 
the chapter. Count the cost, making your 
estimate of time and strength cover thorough, 
first-class work ; and, having accepted, drive the 
enterprise through to a successful conclusion. All 
at it and all the time at it — that will surely win. 
If you have accustomed yourself to downright 
hard work on your studies, carry this over to 
these minor matters. As on the stage, your 
"asides" may be brief and infrequent, but they 
must be spoken as clearly and acted as perfectly 
as any other lines in your part, if either the audi- 
ence or yourself are to be satisfied. If you have 
done your regular work slowly and heavily, it 
will be quickened and lightened by better work 
in other directions. You cannot acquire a rapid 
walk without strengthening and enlarging all 
your physical powers. You cannot have your 
eyes opened by any process whatever, or see more 
accurately any one thing, without widening the 
general range of your vision. Action and re- 
action are in constant play, and carelessness in 
one direction breeds carelessness in another. In 
all this work, therefore, though outside of your 
regular college duties, act well your part. 



VIII 

Electives 

At the opening of your junior year, in many 
institutions even before that year, you will find 
that you may make choice of one or more subjects 
in place of those appearing in the regular curricu- 
lum ; that you may " elect " which one or more 
subjects you will consider. In some colleges the 
courses are fixed, or " required," throughout the 
first two years, with some freedom of movement 
in the junior year, and more in the senior year. 
In others a student is permitted, even in his 
freshman year, to choose one of three sciences ; 
in his sophomore year, to make certain selections 
in the general division of history and political 
science, or within the lines of the division of 
English ; while his last two years become quite 
free. Sometimes this is expressed as a choice of 
so many "hours' work" in any division, depart- 
ment, or school of the university ; generally 

134 



Electives 135 

about two-thirds of the total number of hours 
required. Many institutions demand that one of 
the courses selected shall be known as a major 
course, to which possibly two-thirds of the entire 
schedule time shall be given, the remaining time 
to be spent upon a minor, which shall be cognate 
to the major : as, an English history major with 
contemporaneous continental historj^ as a minor ; 
or Latin as a major with Romance languages as a 
minor. Generally, certain degrees can be ob- 
tained only by meeting certain fixed requirements 
on definite lines ; this demand satisfied, the stu- 
dent may turn freely in any other direction. If 
the student has determined what his professional 
work is to be, some institutions permit him to 
elect a part of that work in place of part or all of 
the usual studies of his last college year, a plan 
which counts the same work toward each of two 
degrees, and shortens the aggregate time usually 
required for both the college work and that of the 
professional school. 

All this has come about slowly, with no little 
opposition, and with many honest differences of 
opinion, and has happened (for its advance has 
been rather casual than regular) because a 



136 The College Student and His Problems 

greater range and keenness of intellectual vision 
has discovered that there are a large number of 
studies having great educational value and power 
which are outside the accepted curriculum ; and 
that the number of these subjects is too large to 
be definitely included in any fixed curriculum. 
Admitting that all are desirable and valuable, 
though perhaps not equally valuable, there is but 
one logical issue : to permit the largest possible 
freedom of choice. Electives have not been es- 
tablished, therefore, to create an easy road to a 
degree ; they are not intended to be regarded as 
a collection of soft snaps, it is not expected that 
they will become the refuge of every weak and 
timid man, the sauntering ground for every edu- 
cational loafer, the safe harbor for every shirk ; 
nor is this true of them — much that is said to the 
contrary notwithstanding. The elective system 
has been' misused and abused by both faculty and 
students, beyond question. It has been the 
means of relieving the student of much that has 
been distasteful to him, and for that very reason 
all the more salutary ; and, undoubtedly, some 
weak or mercenary instructors have used the sys- 
tem to bolster up their failing fortunes. Numbers 



Mectwes 137 

of students and officers considered, it is doubtful 
whether there has been more abuse by one than by 
the other. But this misuse really proves nothing 
as to the merits of the system ; it simply bears 
upon the character, or want of character, of those 
who use the system to further their own private 
ends. In the hands of the ignorant or vicious, 
dynamite is exceedingly dangerous ; but we have 
no serious thought of abandoning its use. 

There are two ways of using electives, either 
being desirable and helpful. Choice may be 
made of those subjects which will broaden the 
otherwise necessarily restricted course, or of 
those which will intensify some portion of it. As 
illustrations of each, you may substitute three one- 
term studies for the last year of Latin, or you 
may take (practically) five years of Latin instead 
of four. Which of these courses you will pursue 
will depend very much upon the nature of your 
graduate work or of your work after graduation, 
upon your natural or acquired liking for a given 
subject, or upon the strength or attractiveness of 
some given instructor. As a fact, it is probable 
that the choice of studies is quite evenly divided 
between intensive and extensive work. From an 



138 The College Student and His Problems 

educational standpoint, it is still doubtful which 
is the more desirable, or whether there is a psy- 
chologic choice between the two. It is probable 
that the wisdom of the choice is determined by 
several factors, in which the personal factor plays 
an important part. 

If your choice is for intensive work, your 
course is comparatively plain. The department 
within which the subject falls necessarily deter- 
mines the exact form of the work, and you are 
very completely under its guidance and practi- 
cally dependent upon it for both opportunity and 
method. It were almost useless to advise you, 
since you are bound to follow the lines which the 
department lays down. The only caution which 
may be given is to be sure not to substitute 
quantity for quality, not to fancy that you are 
doing well because you are doing much, and to 
avoid work offered by some shrewd and unscru- 
pulous instructor — occasionally there is such a 
one, it must be confessed with shame — with the 
intention of advancing his own personal reputa- 
tion or departmental interests rather than of 
contributing to the cause of sound education 
and advanced learning. Fortunately, that quick 



Mectives 139 

insight, that instinct so surely developed in an 
earnest student, is a great protection ; and stu- 
dents often detect a sham, and scent selfishness or 
fraud or incompetency, much sooner than those 
more directly responsible for the management of 
the institution. Unfortunately their own indo- 
lence or selfishness sometimes prompts them to 
profit by the weakness or shortsightedness of 
others ; but they are generally very frank among 
themselves, and you will be rarely misled by the 
prevailing sentiment of the student body, or by 
any considerable portion of it, with regard to the 
actual value of the work of any given instructor. 
Only be thoroughly honest with yourself, and do 
not consent to thwart the very purpose of your be- 
coming a collegian. In this, as in all other educa- 
tional deceit, you really harm only yourself in the 
end. You have had given you time, opportunity, 
and all the materials with which to build a house. 
You may slight the work if you will, you may use 
seconds and commons instead of clear lumber, you 
may put mill finish in place of hand dressing, you 
may cover defects with paint and putty, and 
you may succeed in putting up a building which 
will be favorably received on a final examination, 



140 The College Student and His Problems 

and for which a diploma of merit may be awarded 
you. But you yourself must live in that house, 
and the longer you live in it the more will every 
defect become apparent, the greater will be your 
discomfort because of every dishonesty connected 
with its erection, and the more complete will be 
your humiliation and shame. Never use the elec- 
tive system, then, in other than a most honest 
and faithful effort to strengthen your educa- 
tional work and to enlarge your educational 
opportunities. 

If you decide to broaden your course, you are 
in less danger in the direction just indicated, 
because you will work in several departments ; 
and as a class the members of our college fac- 
ulties are peculiarly honorable, competent, unself- 
ish, and worthy. Indeed, it is very doubtful 
whether any other profession can show a greater 
aggregate or a higher average of integrity in 
both character and work. You will always find 
this definite advantage in all elective work ; it 
is generally on lines of especial interest to the 
instructors as well as to the students, which fact 
naturally creates more than usual enthusiasm in 
both ; and under these conditions the pace is 



Electives 141 

rapid, the sense of fatigue is less, and there is 
a delight and satisfaction to be found only 
in that effort which is entirely voluntary and 
free, known only to those who are running a 
race absolutely of their own choosing. It is 
this which has caused many a student to feel 
and assert that he accomplished more, that his 
work was "more to the purpose," during his 
first term of electives than during any whole 
year of earlier work. There is much exaggera- 
tion in this statement, and a student making it 
does not realize or else forgets that the success 
of his first term of electives is largely if not 
wholly conditioned upon and made possible by 
his earlier fixed work, with its strict discipline 
and sound training ; yet there is much truth in 
the statement also. You should never forget, 
however, that in education as in civil life, per- 
fect liberty is conditioned upon law, not upon 
license ; indeed, with license liberty dies. Edu- 
cation ceases to be possible when intellectual 
vagabondage begins. In broadening your course, 
therefore, you are not to run hither and yon, 
getting here a little and there less, moving 
without definite purpose and stopping by chance, 



142 The College Student and His Problems 

never correlating your work, and securing an 
indigestible pot-pourri of all sorts of depart- 
mental odds and ends and leavings. It is all 
very well to dine a la earte^ and any sensible 
man prefers it to a table d'Mte; but if you mix 
cranberries and cream, and insist on putting 
sugar in your cup-consomme, you will simply 
make a decided mess of what might otherwise 
have been an attractive and palatable menu. 

Let me give you a few illustrations of wisely 
chosen electives, with selections made with a 
view of broadening and enriching your course. 
You may not be able to find at the college of 
your choice the electives which are named here ; 
but the themes will be at least suggestive for 
collateral reading, if you are so unfortunate as 
to fail of direct instruction therein. 

Let us suppose that you have had a half 
year's work in the elements of political economy, 
and have become sufficiently interested to desire 
to extend that work. It ought to be possible 
for you to get a course in practical problems in 
economics — a rapid review of such themes as 
money, the tariff, railways, immigration. To 
this may be added work upon the history of 



Mectives 143 

industrial society ; or the industrial and finan- 
cial history of this country ; or a more specific 
study of public finance and taxation, or of pri- 
vate financiering — such as credit and banking. 
Many institutions are now offering courses in 
trade and commerce and in commercial geog- 
raphy, all of especial interest and value to 
Americans just now. 

Or suppose history to have become something 
more than a collection of the dry bones of dates 
and disconnected events. Then you may take 
a dip into the political and constitutional his- 
tory of England, or the era of the Protestant 
reformation, or the stirring days of the French 
Revolution, or the political history of our own 
country, or the history of European colonies — 
again a subject of most immediate and profound 
interest to us all. A half year, or even two 
hours a week for a half year, given to one or 
more of these themes, would go far toward mak- 
ing you a wise man and an intelligent and help- 
ful citizen. 

Possibly philosophy or psychology prove inter- 
esting. You may follow the elementary work 
with the history of ancient and mediseval and 



144 The College Student and His Problems 

modern philosophic thought; or with a course 
in ethics; or with a half year of logic; or you 
may even go into the laboratory, and try some 
work in experimental psychology, without which 
it is exceedingly difficult to get any very clear 
idea of the modern standpoint. 

General literature may be followed by special 
work on Shakespeare and the English drama, or 
on poetry or the novel. Greek may bring you 
to a study of ancient art; Latin, to that of in- 
scriptions or antiquities. Rhetoric and English 
naturally lead to exercises in rapid writing, in 
brief-making and debating and public speaking, 
in criticism, and in translation. 

With every such advance you reach higher 
ground, you breathe and move more freely, 
your horizon is constantly expanding, you are 
larger in intellectual frame, your work is less 
mechanical, you come into more distinct and 
positive enjoyment of opportunity, hours which 
perhaps have dragged heavily in the past now 
disappear all too rapidly, growth has really be- 
gun, and you are experiencing the pure joy of 
living. 

I have left for my last word on electives that 



Mectives 145 

which is really the best word : this, that after all 
the greatest advantage in the elective system is 
that you have an opportunity to choose your in- 
structor — a most blessed privilege, which you 
ought never willingly to neglect or forego. Al- 
ways remember Mr. Emerson's words, '*It is 
little matter what you learn, the question is with 
whom you learn." What you most need as a 
student is not information, but teachers to whom 
you will be "profoundly and eternally indebted." 
Even under most wise administration it is simply 
impossible to secure a faculty made up entirely of 
men with distinct force of character, earnestness 
of life, constant industry, unfailing thoughtful- 
ness and consideration, unflagging interest in each 
student, and with a high degree of teaching 
power. Really, there are not enough of such men 
to "go around," and the impossible can no more 
be achieved in education than in any other walk 
of life. Hence, there will always be in every fac- 
ulty men who are indolent and selfish and given 
over to eye-service or lip-service only, and indif- 
ferent, even if not downright dishonest. All of 
which simply means that, though quite up to the 
average of other classes and callings — probably 



146 The College Student and His Problems 

even somewhat superior to these — college profes- 
sors are human, sometimes intensely human, not 
infrequently even disagreeably human. But it 
is generally true that every faculty possesses at 
least a few men who are vigorous, and full of fire 
and movement, men who have snap and go in 
them, men who can command the attention and 
respect of every man in the class room, who in- 
spire and quicken into new life, and-, who hold 
till their last hour the warm interest and affec- 
tionate regard of all so fortunate as to sit under 
their instruction. The elective system enables 
you surely to get a taste of such a man, to move 
in his atmosphere for a little while at least, to 
feel the effect of his electric currents, to know 
the thrill and uplift which come from daily asso- 
ciation with such a character. It does not matter 
much what he teaches — elect it, in order that you 
may be able to elect him ; and you will never 
regret your choice. Men are more valuable than 
subjects, and inspiration is far above information. 
The very best feature of the elective system, 
then, is that you may consciously and intelli- 
gently choose the instruction and companionship 
of such a man. 



i 



IX 

The Choice of Life- Work 



I ONCE thought that there could never be a 
period of my own life in which there would come 
more restlessness, more anxiety, more uncertainty, 
a keener sense of general ignorance and inade- 
quacy, than were experienced during the last half 
of my senior year in college. What I was pre- 
pared to do, what I really desired to do, how I 
should go about it, what was to be the first step, 
where I should begin life, how I could earn my 
first dollar, under what circumstances I could be 
sure of earning it at all : these questions tor- 
mented me, by night and by day. To pass by a 
single step, almost in a single day, from depend- 
ence to self-support, from a comfortable and as- 
sured allowance to absolute uncertainty as to how 
the necessary expenses of the first week should be 
met (without turning again to the generosity 
which had marked all the past) ; to feel that one 

147 



148 The College Student and His Problems 

simply must decide, must do something, and still 
not to know what : all this, and more than need 
be written here, made life a burden indeed. All 
this has been kept very fresh in memory by living 
it all over again, year after year, with seniors 
who have come to me with their difficulties and 
perplexities, hoping and begging for some word 
of advice or some bit of experience which would 
bring them light ; not infrequently even seeking 
to relieve themselves of all responsibility by say- 
ing, "I will do whatever you say." 

But, fortunately rather than unfortunately, 
this may never be finally decided by any one but 
yourself, without grave danger of grave error. 
You may and ought to seek advice, to benefit 
by the experience of others, and be determined 
largely by conditions which are not all of your 
own making. Never for a moment believe that 
you are to be the mere creature of these condi- 
tions, that you cannot master them, that they are 
to dominate your entire existence. Your educa- 
tion has wrought but little withiii you if you have 
not a very clear sense of your ability finally to 
overcome all ordinary obstacles, to break all ordi- 
nary bonds, to secure a very large and reasonable 



The Choice of Life -Work 149 

freedom. But in all this it is your own person- 
ality, your own individuality, which is to come to 
the surface ; you are to be the master, and the 
final choice of end and means must lie with you. 
There are two temptations which will come to 
you, surely and strongly and under most pleasing 
guise. One will be to find some way of remain- 
ing for a while under the grateful shadow of your 
alma mater. Four years have given you such a 
home feeling ther?, life is so enjoyable, your room 
at the " f rat. house " is such a delightful den, you 
have such warm friends in the lower classes and 
among the faculty and in the town, your favorite 
instructor offers you a place in his department 
with the suggestion that you can continue one or 
more of the studies which have most interested 
you ; the recognition touches both your pride 
and your gratitude — and above all the decision 
of the great perplexing question is at least de- 
ferred to a more convenient season, and your 
mind is temporarily at rest. Always noting the 
necessary and acknowledged exceptions to every 
rule — but beware that you do not too quickly de- 
termine that you are an exception ! — I hope you 
will not yield to this temptation. Four years in 



150 The College Student and His Problems 

one educational institution, under the influence 
of one set of men, in one atmosphere, are quite 
enough. It is time you breathed some fresh air, 
saw everything from a different standpoint, 
moved over to another position on the firing line, 
but always on the firing line ! Many wise and 
experienced educators think that there is a de- 
cided advantage in carrying freshman and sopho- 
more work in one college, and junior and senior 
work in another. Nearly all agree that the 
Master's and Doctor's degrees ought to be sought 
elsewhere than in the institution which makes 
you a Bachelor of Arts. The conditions which 
lead to this decision are precisely those which 
have even greater force in determining that it is 
not wise for you to accept employment in your 
college immediately after graduation. Win your 
spurs on another field, and come back to your 
alma mater later, to confer a larger benefit by 
reason of years of experience and observation in 
a larger world. If you enter the ranks of her 
workers in any other spirit or under any other 
conditions, all the chances are that the college 
will be perpetually carrying you instead of you 
carrying the college ; that you will either grow 



The Qhoice of Life -Work 151 

strong very slowly, or that you will even grow 
weaker ; that your narrow rut will soon be so 
deep that all hope of your seeing over the top of 
it will be gone ; that you will lean up against 
this dear nourishing mother so long and so hard 
that you will finally lose the use of your legs. 
This is a withholding that is a scattering abroad, 
and it is as selfish as it is weak. True it is that 
you can grow into experience only by and 
through experience, and that you will doubtless 
gain experience at the cost of another ; but do 
Dot let it be at the cost of your mother ! 

The second temptation will be to enter into the 
business world or upon professional life in connec- 
tion with your father, or with some near relative 
who has a place ready for you or whose interest 
in your future prompts him to create a place for 
you. It may seem strange that any one should 
advise you against accepting such a position, yet 
this advice would certainly be sound and timely. 
If the place is simply one of many, in some or- 
ganization necessarily so large as to overshadow 
parental influence, except as the latter may open 
the door to opportunity ; and if you are not to 
be immediately under parental control, but are to 



152 The College Student and His Problems 

stand or fall absolutely by your own merit — that 
is another matter. It is surely a piece of good 
fortune, not to be ignored, that you may so im- 
mediately find an opening for your activity and 
for your ambition ; and it is entirely proper that 
you should rejoice in this good fortune and use it 
wisely in furthering your interests. But direct 
and close connection with your father, in the 
usual way and in the ordinary business or pro- 
fessional relations, will surely be dangerous, 
unless both of you are remarkable men. It is 
simply impossible for the average father to treat 
his son as he would treat any other employee, 
holding him to account for his absence, his tardi- 
ness, his slow pace, his delays, his carelessness, 
his blunders, with the same rigidity and inflexi- 
bility which mark his dealings with all other 
subordinates. And it is equally impossible for 
you to feel toward your father as you would 
feel toward the average employer ; and to hesi- 
tate just as much and just as often about asking 
special favors, or making slight inroads upon 
office rules and custom. Yet much of your 
future success will be determined by the dis- 
cipline of these first few years, and you ought to 



The Choice of Life -Work 153 

be so situated that the proper penalty will fall 
swift and sure, and that you will feel yourself 
under practically inexorable law. If you once 
settle the question of punctuality, for example, 
in favor of a " margin of fifteen minutes," 
incalculable harm is done, injury from which you 
will recover with great difficulty, if you ever 
recover at all. Further, under your father's im- 
mediate supervision you will rarely have the 
same opportunity to develop your judgment by 
use as would come to you under the supervision 
of another. To him you are ever and always a 
boy. He does not realize, perhaps he cannot 
realize, that you have come to man's estate. It 
never occurs to him to consult you, to defer to 
you would seem absurd. It is another instance 
of the familiarity which breeds contempt, of the 
prophet without honor in his own house. On 
your part, it would seem strange to question 
your father's judgment or to seek to change his 
purpose or plan. All this is exceedingly natural. 
For years, in fact all your life, you have been 
deferential to him, you have leaned upon him, 
you have accepted his judgment and 3^ou have 
conformed your plans to his wishes ; in the 



154 The College Student and His Problems 

largest and best sense of the word, you have 
been one of his dependents. In the very nature 
of things, neither of you can at once and com- 
pletely change these conditions, nor is it alto- 
gether necessary or desirable that they should 
entirely cease. You ought to feel that he is still 
your kindest counsellor, and wise (perhaps not 
the wisest) adviser ; but to be most effective and 
satisfactory and least harmful, this relation 
should be neither commingled nor confused with 
other relations. Come back to your father's 
bank, or factory, or corporation, or professional 
practice, after a while — preferably after a long 
while — when you have had time to prove to the 
world the stuff of which you are made, when the 
world has given you such clear and complete 
recognition that every one knows that your 
return will add strength to the management, 
skill and reputation to the practice, success to 
the enterprise. Of course, if for any reason your 
father wishes or is compelled practically and 
openly to withdraw from care of his businessj or 
from a very definite portion of it, you may 
safely return sooner. 

Otherwise wait, and work elsewhere. Other- 



The Choice of Life -Work 155 

wise not only will your strength and experience 
grow slowly under the deadly shade of your 
father's reputation and personality, but your own 
good name will increase even less. The world 
gives hasty judgment, it must do so, it cannot pos- 
sibly stop to analyze closely, it must determine 
rather superficially ; but the world long since 
determined that when a son allies himself with his 
father, who is already successful and of good 
standing, the rule is that if either folly or dis- 
aster appear in the future management it is 
because the father trusted too much to the son ; 
whereas if prosperity continues, it is simply 
because of the father's strength and power. You 
will never receive recognition for what you 
accomplish ; success will always be passed to your 
father's credit account. But failure will always 
be charged to you. 

Strike out for yourself, then. 

About the older professions it is not necessary 
that much be said here, except to call your atten- 
tion quite sharply to one great distinction between 
the practice of law and of medicine, and preach- 
ing and teaching, — a distinction which may have 
part of its force in the fact that the last two are 



156 The College Student and His Problems 

salaried professions, in which you advance more 
quickly to reasonable competence than you do in 
the first two. You must wait a long time for 
recognition and work very hard, as either lawyer 
or doctor ; but at forty-five years of age you are 
in your professional prime, and the great suc- 
cesses of your life are to come in the next twenty 
years, decline not becoming apparent before your 
sixty-fifth year. But as a teacher or preacher, in 
a certain sense your prospects grow dim from 
your forty-fifth year on ; the dead line of fifty is 
soon reached, and after that you are in perpetual 
danger. Younger men, trained by better methods 
in later schools of thought and practice, are press- 
ing hard upon your heels ; your own income has 
been too meagre for you to do all you ought in 
the matter of keeping touch with the world ; 
your freshness is departing, and this means a dis- 
tinct loss in efficiency and power ; and public 
sentiment has already so crystallized that, while 
you may be so fortunate as to retain a place for 
many years above fifty, you will rarely be called 
to a new position after you have passed that age, 
and still less often will you be put on your feet if 
you happen to fall after you have reached that 



The Choice of Life-Work 157 

age. I am not undertaking to turn you either 
toward one profession or away from another, but 
you ought to know the fact just stated. 

Having written this, it may not be out of place 
after all for me to add a few sentences of sugges- 
tion — scarcely more than suggestion — concern- 
ing these same old honored callings. It is 
noteworthy that in all four there is an increasing 
demand for administrative skill and executive 
ability. The foremost lawyers of our day are 
often little more than high-grade advisers in 
business affairs, — a statement peculiarly true of 
the renowned corporation lawyers. The most 
successful ministers are those who know how to 
organize, how to set machinery in motion, how to 
bring things to pass. The educational world still 
longs for men who can successfully supervise the 
schools of a city or the departments of a college 
or university. The general practitioner of medi- 
cine is more nearly independent and self-centred 
than the others ; and it is probably more true of 
him than of the others that he works alone, and 
not very far from old lines — though the advance 
in surgery is quite as great as, say, that in electri- 
cal engineering. The result of all this is both 



158 The College Student and His Problems 

the need and the development of quite a new set 
of qualities as the condition of success. You must 
examine yourself carefully, in the light of the 
new demand, before you enter upon the old pro- 
fessions with hope of success. 

In the practice of your profession you will 
doubtless be called upon to determine between 
the city and the country town or village. In the 
city you will wait longer for recognition, but you 
will climb higher in the end. If you wish to be 
immediately known, and if you desire a reason- 
able income within an unreasonable time, then the 
county seat or small town is to be chosen. You 
should always remember, however, that acquaint- 
ance is to a professional man precisely what 
goods are to a merchant — his stock in trade ; 
and that the greater part of this you must throw 
away if you change your residence. Recognizing 
this, many professional men — possibly most pro- 
fessional men — do not change their residence. 
Having begun their work in the small town, they 
stick there. At least, there is danger of, this. 
The larger life, the larger professional life, of the 
city, is an education in itself, and a great stimulus. 
It is positively of more value to be beaten in a 



The Choice of Life -Work 159 

hard fight by an opponent of marked ability and 
recognized standing, than to win an easy victory 
from some pin-headed pettifogger; and if you 
happen to win in the more worthy contest, the 
results of the struggle are immediate and gratify- 
ing. Rewards are generally quite commensurate 
with responsibility, and no great returns can be 
made in either money or fame to the young advo- 
cate who is known only as " a rising young cow 
lawyer." I know it is often said that it is better 
to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion, 
the soundness of which doctrine is surely debat- 
able. The tail of the lion has definite even though 
somewhat remote connection with a very majestic 
and very powerful animal ; and it is certainly 
quite as worthy to listen appreciatively to a 
kingly roar in God's open forest as to squeak 
and gibber in the corner of some dark and un- 
savory closet. 

Yet I would not have you construe this into 
a criticism adverse to life outside of the city. 
If you are to work to live rather than live to 
work, if you desire many leisure hours in the 
midst of surroundings which tend to quiet 
nerves and calm thoughts, and much serene en- 



160 The College Student and His Problems 

joyment of existence, then you will avoid the 
metropolis. Some of the most delightful rela- 
tions known between men have been those unit- 
ing a country lawyer, a country doctor, a country 
pastor, or a country teacher with his people. 
Some of the most enduring and ennobling friend- 
ships have arisen in this way. Passing years 
have not weakened these bonds ; the circle of 
influence has extended wider and yet wider, 
year after year ; the service rendered has always 
and more and more overshadowed the mere 
money return made for the same ; a ripe old 
age has been crowned with affectionate interest 
and tender solicitude ; and death has found the 
entire community bereaved and sorrowing, and 
the little children crying in the village street. 
That is a life worth living and a reward worth 
seeking, if your heart is warm enough and your 
brain is sane enough and your whole stature is 
large enough to tempt you to try to fill such 
a place. 

Fortunately a college-bred man is no longer 
shut in to the four old-time professions. With 
all their honor and length of days, these now 
have sharp competitors — callings which honor as 



The Choice of Life -Work 161 

surely and reward even more lavishly. Engi- 
neering in all its phases — electrical, mechanical, 
civil, mining, sanitary, marine — is a remarkable 
illustration of the rapid rise of a new profession 
to a position of the greatest dignity and power. 
Architecture is side by side with this, healthy 
in rivalry and hearty in cooperation. Landscape 
gardening lags but a little in the rear, and for- 
estry is beginning to attract attention. Even 
art and music are more commanding than in 
earlier years ; better, perhaps, are reverting to 
their earlier and worthier position. In all these 
directions is opportunity, incentive, promise, 
appreciation, honor, and more than competence. 
All these differ from the older professions in 
this at least, that there is room and demand 
for great ingenuity, for invention, for contriv- 
ance ; a constant temptation toward original 
investigation and research. With the older call- 
ings movement is along regular lines, long since 
determined and settled ; with the new, every- 
thing is unsettled, except a very few funda- 
mental propositions. There is peculiar room 
for individuality, for audacity, for freshness 
of thought as well as vigor of thinking. We 



162 The College Student and His Problems 

sometimes hear of our remarkable mastery of 
the powers of earth and air. As a matter of 
fact we have scarcely begun such mastery, we 
have hardly gone beyond the initial discovery. 
At midnight of the last day of the last century 
we were all exclaiming that the coming century 
could bring us no such marvellous advance as 
the last had seen ; but the very first week of 
the new year told us of the possibility of dis- 
tinct and inexpensive telephone communication 
with England and with the Continent, and as- 
sured us that wireless telegraphy is a success. 
This is but one of the many illustrations of the 
vastness of the unexplored fields immediately 
about us, waiting for men of fine training and 
even finer temper and ambition. There was 
never greater opportunity for a young man than 
now. 

Much the same demand comes from the world 
of commerce and from the world of production. 
These words are written while the cry for or- 
ganization, and the creation of organizations, 
are unprecedented in the world's history. Never 
has there been such imperative need of clear- 
brained, large-minded men, — resourceful men. 



The Choice of Life -Work 163 

men preeminently of the hour and for the 
emergency, men who can show the results of 
the highest training, men who have responded 
to every opportunity, and therefore can be trusted 
to answer to this call. The door to successful 
life and to large renown is no longer the four- 
leaved portal ; that were far too narrow, far 
too small. It is a series of uplifting and many- 
folding doors, opening out on all sides of this 
central tower, and leading direct to every part 
of the field of active life. There is no direc- 
tion which the college-bred man may not take 
with little fear of failure, with reasonable assur- 
ance of success. There is no reason, therefore, 
for long hesitation on your part, unless it be 
because of the very plentitude of your riches 
in opportunity and in right of way. It is en- 
tirely true that over-organization tends to lessen 
individualism and to weaken personal endeavor ; 
but this tendency is found in over- organization 
only, and generally may be trusted to correct 
itself. The unquestioned fact is that when com- 
mercial or productive ventures were so conducted 
that the element of venture was almost elimi- 
nated, when a man was able to look after his 



164 The College Student and His Problems 

own affairs in detail and knew every night 
exactly the condition of his entire business, 
there was far less need of assistants with experi- 
ence, judgment, foresight, ingenuity, absolute 
integrity and faithfulness, than there is to-day, 
with organizations doing business in all states 
of the Union, and in several foreign countries 
besides. Take, as a very fair illustration of my 
meaning, the old-time carriage or wagon maker. 
He secured his timber from his neighbors, and 
seasoned it himself. The metal portions were 
all fashioned in his own shop. The leathers 
were put on in the same village, if not by his 
own workmen. The master worked at the 
bench, in the forge, or in his office, side by side 
with his workmen, who were few in number. 
They had all grown up together in the same com- 
munity, had attended the same school, had sat 
in the same church, had discussed township and 
state and national affairs in the same country 
store, and had voted public offices upon each 
other and rather unwilling neighbors in the same 
town meeting. Each knew the wages and the 
hours of the other, each knew the cost of raw 
material, each knew the results of a day's work. 



The Choice of Life -Work 165 

The product of this joint industry was sold at 
the shop door, and then each knew what was 
his fair share of the price. You can easily see 
that there was one man and one mind directing 
all and practically responsible for all ; and that 
while personal relations between master and 
workman were perhaps more close and intimate 
than now, of the workman there was little 
asked except industry and faithfulness with daily 
tasks, and there was absolutely no intermediary. 
But now the carriage-shop has become the factory, 
and involves business relations covering a large 
territory, relations which cannot be maintained 
without dividing responsibility between many 
persons. Perhaps the spokes will come from 
Maine, the felloes from Wisconsin, the hubs 
from Kentucky, the tire from Pennsylvania, the 
bolts from Sweden, the box (in the white) from 
New York, the dash and the top from Ohio, 
and so on through the list. The finished prod- 
ucts will be sold in a hundred markets, for cash 
and on time ; and credits will be a factor in 
the entire transaction, from start to finish. But 
this work supplants the old-time owner and his 
personal activity and vigilance, with all the 



166 The College Student and His Problems 

hired employees and intermediaries of modern or- 
ganization, of a modern corporation. Superintend- 
ents, foremen, clerks, agents, accountants, cashiers 
buyers, sellers, inspectors — all these are at once 
in demand, and multiply as the business enlarges. 
Add to these the increased service with the 
mails, the telegraph, and the telephone ; the 
transportation of persons and freight by land 
and by water ; the increasing bank facilities ; 
and the many other points in the modern busi- 
ness world at which growth in one form aug- 
ments business of every form, and then multiply 
all this, not by the greater number of carriage 
and wagon makers, but by the multitudinous 
enterprises of this day and age, and you will 
get some notion, though still an inadequate 
notion, of the increased demand for men and 
service in every conceivable direction, between 
the rank and file and the great captains of 
industry. 

All of this vast field is open to college-bred 
men, as to others ; and at least three-quarters of 
it is open to college-bred men as to no others. 
Not that there are so man}^ opportunities for you 
to make direct use of Latin or French or higher 



The Choice of Life -Work 167 

mathematics or philosophy or history or litera- 
ture; but that there is a special demand for the 
trained mind, the keener perceptions, the more 
accurate thinking, the greater power of concen- 
tration, and the larger vision, — all of which ought 
to have come to you with and from your college 
life. And for the men with such qualities and 
powers, promotion is sure and rapid. In all this, 
and in enlarged freedom of choice, you are far 
in advance of those graduates who even fifty 
years ago faced the outer world for the first 
time, as you are facing it to-day. 

Not only has there come this larger outlook in 
the new professions and in commerce and in pro- 
duction, but the territory has been wonderfully 
extended geographically ; and this in itself neces- 
sarily means increased opportunity. Roughly 
speaking, there are open to your choice the three 
great divisions of your own country, and the 
scarcely greater outside world. The more strik- 
ing characteristics of each, those which at once 
appeal to a young and untried man, are these : — 

The East is still a land of traditions, prece- 
dents, conventionality. The currents of all life 
run in more set and determined channels, with 



168 The College Student and His Problems 

banks high enough to prevent any sudden over- 
flow. If you have family prestige, or available 
inheritance of any sort, it will not take you long 
to get on your feet ; precisely as you can always 
borrow money if you can put up gilt-edged se- 
curity. But the prevailing attitude will be that 
you are not to be deemed successful until you 
have proven your case beyond peradventure ; 
and that you are always and everywhere handi- 
capped by your youth. Great enterprises and gray 
hair go together, if safety and dignity and general 
respectability are to be considered and conserved. 
The largest money resources, the greatest amount 
of available wealth, are still in the East ; and 
these are always conservative. Nothing will look 
after itself more carefully and more cautiously 
and more successfully than a dollar, unless it be 
two dollars ; and the dollars are still near the 
eastern seaboard. Generally speaking, therefore, 
you will find the start more difficult along the 
Atlantic coast. On the other hand, there is more 
here " to do with " — as the phrase goes — when 
you are once fairly under way. In law, medi- 
cine, and theology, and in trade and commerce, 
it is undoubtedly true that most of the great 



The Choice of Life -Work 169 

prizes are still east of the Alleghanies. Great 
undertakings have their origin here; you are at 
the beginning of things, you are brought face 
to face with men of world-wide reputation. If 
you can succeed here, in the service of such men 
first and in competition with them afterward, 
you win marked success, you rise rapidly, and 
you will doubtless touch a much higher mark. 
But it will take time ; and before you win, you 
may fancy that it is time but slightly differen- 
tiated from eternity. 

The West has more freedom of movement, and 
grants more ready recognition. Its life is still 
something like that of the colonies, where there 
is necessarily large equality in origin and re- 
sources. These people feel that they have much 
to do for themselves that has been accomplished 
already in and for the East by past generations ; 
and they are not so very particular as to who 
does it, or as to how it is done — provided only 
that it is done. Accomplishment rather than in- 
strumentality, ends rather than means, results 
rather than methods : this is their spirit. Their 
inquiry of a young man is. What can you do, and 
do right now, and do for this community? In 



170 The College Student and His Problems 

their social life, as in their business relations, 
they presume a man worthy until he shows that 
he is not. This is absolutely necessary in a 
community in which no one has yet been born, 
though all are newcomers ; and the necessity of 
the earlier life remains the tradition or the cus- 
tom of the latter. In the beginning the work to 
be done far outran the available workers, and 
so every one was pressed into service. This 
necessarily meant much hasty work, some poor 
work, some dishonest work, some work which 
must be done over again ; and all this involved 
more or less loss. But it was not so much a 
question of correct taste in architecture, of dura- 
bility of material, and of excellence of work- 
manship, as of securing immediate shelter ; and 
this figure may illustrate the conditions in every 
form of life and activity. Much of all this re- 
mains to this day, both for good and for evil, 
though the evil is rapidly and inevitably giving 
way to the good. If you wish to be accepted at 
once, upon presumptive merit, without much 
reference to your ancestors and with very little 
inquiry as to your pedigree, go West. It is a 
country whose leisure class is almost wholly in 



The Choice of Life -Work 171 

the penitentiary or by the roadside ; and it still 
has a place and a recognition for the energetic, 
for the active, for the ambitious, for the well- 
equipped young man. It is an especially good 
field within which to practise the newer profes- 
sions to which reference has already been made. 
In the South is even greater conservatism 
than in the East ; yet warmth, cordiality, courte- 
ousness — sincere, simple, and from the heart. 
Its traditions are grounded upon a rock, and 
its people turn very slowly from the old to the 
new, largely because they honestly prefer the 
old rather than the new. They feel that there 
is something in life besides hurry and stress and 
strain, and better than these. They are not at 
all anxious to be strenuous, the clang of the 
murderously swift trolley car is not sweet music 
to their ears. They do not care to hear the 
telephone dinning every five minutes of the day ; 
they are still willing to walk quietly to a neigh- 
bor's house or office to deliver a message in person ; 
they still write letters of friendship and some 
business letters "by hand" rather than on the 
typewriter ; a man is not necessarily set down as 
a scoundrel because it is not entirely convenient 



172 The College Student and His Problems 

for him to pay a note within the three days of 
grace ; and a sense of personal honor rather than 
statutory requirement controls all business re- 
lations and transactions. While not suspicious 
of strangers, they are in no hurry to open the 
charmed circle, and while willing to advance 
they have no desire for a "boom." To a young 
man with character and temperament already 
somewhat in accord with the existing conditions 
there, and not very anxious for public recog- 
nition or to get rich, the South presents many 
attractions. 

You will understand, of course, that all this 
is but a rough chalk-sketch of these varying 
conditions. The distinctions and differences 
are by no means so clearly marked as even ten 
years ago, and lines which have long been sharply 
drawn are now fast being obliterated. Kansas 
is as civilized as New York, Minnesota and 
Wisconsin are as attractive as New England, 
St. Louis has as sound business methods as 
Philadelphia, Chicago is developing a social and 
literary and artistic life which will place it side 
by side with Boston, there is a great commer- 
cial outlook for New Orleans, and an equal 



The Choice of Life -Work 173 

promise for manufacturing and mining in the 
middle southern states. You will find men of 
ability, of sound education and training, of in- 
dustry, of ambition, wherever you go. There 
is no more dearth of good timber in the West 
and South than there is in the East, there is no 
more overcrowding in commercial lines in New 
York than there is in Kansas City or in St. Paul. 
If you go in any direction because you think 
that you are more necessary there, regardless 
of your positive merit and effective value, you 
will be sadly undeceived in the first week. No 
section of this country is longing for you, the 
procession of advancing civilization has not 
halted by the roadside for you to appear and 
take the lead, no one is waiting for you anywhere. 
Whichever way you turn, you must be prepared 
to win your way. Everywhere, however, there 
is something to be done. If you can do it, and 
do it well, especially if you can do it better than 
the other fellow can, your success is assured. 

As to life and work outside of this country, 
in our new possessions, or in the older though 
not less friendly lands, that is a question of vol- 
untary exile, of practical expatriation. Even 



174 The College Student and His Problems 

the comparatively short-term positions in the 
civil service take you out of the current of 
American life long enough to make your return 
difficult indeed. If you do succeed in establish- 
ing the statu quo, the time spent abroad is almost 
wasted, as far as home influence and prestige 
and opportunity are concerned. It is about as 
fateful as it is for a young lawyer to go to Con- 
gress, and very few ever entirely recover from 
that. When it comes to a settled residence 
abroad for the conduct of business — well, noth- 
ing but an undue desire to get rich could possibly 
tempt a thoroughbred American to do that ; and 
I am inclined to think that a thoroughbred 
American will not yield to such a temptation 
except as an emergency demands temporarily 
such a sacrifice. This is to recognize such resi- 
dence as the exception to the normal, and as 
such it need not be discussed. 

Do you complain that after all I have really 
told you nothing definite, nothing in detail, about 
your choice of life-work? Nothing definite, 
nothing in detail, can be told you. When you 
reach the discussion of details, the personal ele- 
ment comes in as the controlling factor ; and your 



The Choice of Life -Work 175 

choice will be finally determined entirely by your- 
self. All any one ought to dare to do is to give 
you this outline, these salient features, unless it be 
to encourage you by saying that there is really no 
harm whatever in your trying several occupations, 
provided that you are thoroughly settled to your 
life-work by your thirtieth year. You ought to 
know yourself by that time, and you will probably 
discover yourself by that time ; but up to that 
time you should feel both independent and free. 
Coming back to our starting-point, the last 
term of your senior year — put away all anxiety, 
keep your eyes open, use your friends legitimately 
as aids to opportunity, never forget that you may 
find a place by luck but that you will never hold 
it by luck ; do anything honorable rather than be 
idle, and do that which is nearest your hand, and 
do not only well but best. If this is in your 
heart, then there is no room for fear. 



A Few Last Words 

As I turn to the last chapter of this " thin book," 
it is with just a natural little curiosity as to 
how it has impressed you, what you have received 
from it and how far it has been of service to you, 
how much of it you will remember after you have 
laid it aside, how much of it you can and will put 
into practice — yes, with even a little curiosity as 
to whether you have really read it through. 
Whatever may be its faults, however, I am sure 
you will hold me blameless on one count at least — 
I have not burdened you with preachments. Do 
not turn away, therefore, from these few last 
words, the purpose of which is to aid you, if pos- 
sible, in determining your scheme of life. 

Every man must have a more or less definite 
thought of life as a whole — and it should be more 
definite rather than less, — of what life ought to 
mean to him, of what he may reasonably expect 

176 



A Few Last Words 177 

from it, of the end in view and the means by 
which to reach that end — or he goes blindly, aim- 
lessly, hopelessly. His views may change, doubt- 
less they will change, as to many details ; but as 
early as possible he ought to determine what 
fundamental principles he will accept and why he 
accepts them. He who has a faith in his own 
ultimate success, born of a conviction that he has 
thought out his own problem to an approved con- 
clusion, and who is able and ready to give a reason 
for the faith that is in him, is in no serious danger 
of failure. Indeed, his battles are already quite 
half fought and his victory quite half won. 

Whatever you may hold most desirable, most 
worthy of effort, you must remember that 
advancement and success always and necessarily 
mean increased responsibility. This is the unfail- 
ing result of every upward step which you take. 
There is no possible escape from this. No matter 
what may be the form of your ambition or of 
your activity, all growth simply means heavier 
burdens to be carried. These may not be in- 
creasingly burdensome — that is another matter ; 
but the load is always increasing. If you desire 
more patients, or more clients, or a larger parish, 



178 The College Student and His Problems 

or a full chair instead of an assistant's position, 
if you are striving to enlarge your reputation as 
an engineer or as an architect or as an adminis- 
trator of either public or private affairs, it is all 
one in this result — your reward will be ad- 
ditional responsibility. It is as though the 
formula of atmospheric pressure were reversed, 
the pounds per square inch increasing in pro- 
portion to the elevation. Even mere financial 
success follows the same rule ; since increase of 
salary is necessarily conditioned upon increased 
responsibility, while increase of income must 
follow increase of business, which means increas- 
ing activity, increasing competition, increasing 
risk, increasing care and anxiety of every conceiv- 
able sort and in every conceivable direction. 

And this increase of responsibility is always 
accompanied by increasingly numerous and im- 
portant personal relations. You are necessarily 
more and more dependent upon a larger and 
larger number of persons, and the exact converse 
is also true — that a larger and larger number of 
persons are dependent upon you. You must 
satisfy more patrons, if trade is to increase ; and 
more and more employees are affected by your 



A Few Last Words 179 

success or failure. Many a captain of industry 
finds himself in precisely the position of an hered- 
itary king ; he cannot resign and withdraw to 
private life, be this never so desirable. He has so 
wrought his own life in with the lives of others, 
the common interest and the common purpose 
have so completely overshadowed the individual 
interest of each, or have so definitely set the 
individual interest of each in the swift and resist- 
less current of common life, that they may never 
be separated. Many a man has continued in 
business long after it has ceased to be profitable, 
or after he desired to take a well-earned rest, be- 
cause he felt that he must care for his employees 
— those who had spent the best part of their lives 
in his service. Many a physician has gone with- 
out a much needed vacation because he could not 
desert his patients. Many a lawyer has toiled far 
into later life over estates which would not be 
closed, and over cases which could not be brought 
either to trial or to satisfactory settlement. 

Success, therefore, inevitably means greater 
responsibility and more important and more 
numerous personal relations. Like the servant 
who was faithful with five talents, in the parable 



180 The College Student and His Problems 

with which. I hope you are acquainted, your 
reward is not retirement on the pension list, 
nor selfish gratification, nor idle hours at play — 
but the control of ten cities : a figure of speech 
which expresses the very highest form of con-, 
tinuous and intelligent activity. It logically 
follows that only as you prepare for these re- 
sponsibilities, only as you show yourself to be 
an approved burden-bearer, can you possibly 
hope for success that is worth while. This 
brings us face to face with the profound and 
philosophic truth of the Master's saying, "He 
who would be greatest among you, let him be 
the servant of all." Here as elsewhere during 
your life, you will find that all the currents of 
success set toward the truth of that Master 
who should be your Master and friend. 

Your scheme of life, therefore, ought to 
recognize the place and value and power of the 
law of service. Under no other law may man 
hope for success which is lasting or life which 
is satisfying. Any other theory of life is narrow 
and. insufficient and one-sided and short sighted. 
By any other road you come only to absolute 
failure and dire disaster. Consciously or uncon- 



A Few Last Words 181 



sciously, the world about you has set up this 
standard, and will render its judgment thereby. 
If you are able and willing to serve, in a large 
and generous way, the future is already your 
own. This does not mean that you are neces- 
sarily to spend much of either time or money 
outside your chosen calling — though you cer- 
tainly will spend some of either or both, because 
every man must do this if he lives aright ; but 
it does mean that you are always to measure 
your daily work in your chosen calling by the 
completeness and efficiency and sufficiency with 
which it meets the wants and needs of your fellow- 
men. A. T. Stewart was accustomed to charge his 
salesmen to study the faces of customers, and 
never to permit them to even look disappointed. 
Wanamaker boasts that no patron was ever told 
a second time that the firm did not carry certain 
stock; "get what is asked for," is his rule. 
Railway managers publicly invite criticism and 
suggestion, hotel men ask to have the negligence 
or incompetence of employees promptly reported ; 
in every vocation and calling is this sense of 
responsibility to others, this recognition of ser- 
vice as the true measure of every condition of 



182 The College Student and His Problems 

success. If to study to please, to canvass most 
anxiously the demands of the community in order 
to be able most completely to meet these de- 
mands, to strive by every possible means to 
command the confidence of others and to win 
their respect, to strain every nerve to gratify 
others, — if all this is to be unselfish, then the 
most wisely selfish people of our day are the 
most unselfish. Of course, between these two 
stands (nearly always) the fact and modifying 
factor that you are also very mindful of the 
direct return to yourself, in salary or other 
revenue, in fame and reputation, in the delight 
which comes with a sense of power and from 
the exercise of power. But all this must not 
prevent your very clear recognition of the law 
of service as that fundamental and all-controlling 
law which is discovered by a last analysis of pres- 
ent social, civil, ethical, and commercial condi- 
tions. There is no largeness of life without this. 
This must lead you to a constant study of 
relations, of human perspective, and will make 
you unwilling to accept any position which is 
isolated, exclusive, seclusive. You are bound to 
make the most of yourself, to develop to the 



A Few Last Words 183 

uttermost every faculty and power, to strike 
twelve every time, not only for your own sake 
but for the sake of the common welfare. You 
have no inherent right to content yourself with 
anything lower or less worthy ; to withdraw 
yourself and to dwindle away until you are a 
cipher among the figures which go to make up 
the sum of life, or possibly an integer on the 
wrong side of the decimal point, — a mere frac- 
tion of what you might be, and very possibly a 
vulgar fraction at that. It has come to pass 
that you simply cannot serve yourself except by 
serving others, and your largest gain for your- 
self will come from the largest and most effec- 
tive service of others. It must be a very 
sincere service, honest throughout in workman- 
ship, in quality, in ability, in whatever you 
offer; for the world was never so keen to 
detect sham, never so ready to uncover fraud 
and to place it shamefaced in the public pillory. 
But you must go outside of yourself, and think 
and feel in a large way, unless you court fail- 
ure and oblivion. Only the mind which is 
public and large, which works in the daylight, 
which rejoices in the fresh air, can hope for 



184 The College Student and His Problems 

worthy and lasting success in its schemes and 
undertakings. Keep your doors and windows 
open, therefore; plan for the life which is con- 
tinually in touch with your fellow-men, — a large 
life of intelligent service, which easily means 
large and generous returns. 

In doing this, always remember two things. 
First, maintain your individuality at all costs. 
Never permit yourself to be submerged, never 
become an indefinable atom in mass life, never 
"go with the crowd" in the sense of blindly 
and unintelligently pushing hither and yon in 
the midst of a mob. To develop the individual 
and a sense of his value has taken time and a 
long time ; it has been the battle-ground of the 
centuries, it has cost enormously in blood and 
in treasure, but it is worth all it has cost. 
This is a heritage not to be thrown away or 
sold for a mess of pottage. I am especially 
anxious that you should understand the dangers 
of mass life and of mass movement. The mo- 
ment we speak of masses we forget the individ- 
ual, we have turned away from the individual ; 
and the moment we turn away from the 
individual, all that is most desirable in life per- 



A Few Last Words 185 

ishes. Whenever we speak of masses of popu- 
lation at given points, whether we appreciate it 
or not, we are generally referring to a society 
which has lost sight of the individual, in which 
the individual has little power of his own either 
to shun evil and misery and want, or to attempt 
achievement and accomplishment ; a society in 
which the few live while the many only exist, 
and in which, unfortunately, it is generally true 
that the few live, and live as they live, because 
the many only exist. The units of these masses 
can hardly be called citizens, since little regard 
is paid to their individual existence or rights, 
no right of way is given to their individual 
purposes or desires, no sympathy goes out to 
meet their individual hopes or fears. The char- 
acteristics and the conditions of society which 
we easily recognize to-day as making the indi- 
vidual man, and especially as making him to 
differ from every other man, are almost entirely 
unknown. You cannot afford for a moment to 
accept any scheme of life that will place either 
yourself or others in this position. 

The fact that the activity and responsibility 
and the independence of each person must be 



186 The College Student and His Problems 

determined by himself is a fact that we are all 
coming to appreciate more and more, and in 
which we are all finding new strength. I do 
not mean by this that you are to ignore the 
past, or to set aside precedent. He who cuts 
himself loose from the past is lost, unless he be 
a phenomenal character — and such are very 
rare indeed. There is a legitimate power and 
authority in all the experience of the race, — an 
authority because it has proved its right to be, 
because it has grown out of prior conditions un- 
der which very much such a humanity as that of 
to-day has succeeded or has failed. No one may 
safely deny that there are some dangers which 
come with this greater recognition of individual- 
ity, with this greater individual freedom. You 
must remember that freedom unchains all the 
forces of society, the bad as well as the good. 
There can be no such thing as partial freedom, 
if we are to secure the very best results. The 
weak side and the false side and the imperfect 
side of human nature are present in most of us. 
Freedom sets free all these forces. We may 
have restraining penal laws by which when a 
man takes undue advantage of the very freedom 



A Few Last Words 187 

we have given him we punish him ; but that is 
all we can do. We cannot restrain him to the ex- 
tent that he does not freely exercise his choice. 
You will find in every community frivolous minds, 
ill-balanced minds, minds that are merely inquisi- 
tive and not acquisitive ; persons who concern- 
ing any truth always ask "What is it?" and 
never ask " What are my relations to it ? " The 
freedom of the individual puts these frivolous 
minds and these ill-balanced minds and these 
merely inquisitive minds upon precisely the same 
footing and gives them precisely the same liberty 
which it gives the strongest, wisest, and best 
minds. This is why individual and civil freedom, 
as we know it to-day, is only absolutely and un- 
qualifiedly safe in communities which have them- 
selves under stern and intelligent self-control. 
With all your striving to maintain your individu- 
ality, therefore, never loosen the lines of that wise 
authority which you should exercise over yourself. 
Second, remember that this individuality and 
this individual accountability compel you to seek 
the truth without regard to its results to yourself. 
The man who to-day discovers dynamite and says 
" This is a dangerous explosive ; I will not make 



188 The College Student and His Problems 

my discovery known lest harm may come of it," 
is a coward, and cannot become a benefactor of his 
race. The time is passed when the world is to 
be fed on truth in homeopathic doses because 
some over- wise and over-careful people think the 
world is not strong enough to bear a full diet. 
If you think you have discovered any great truth, 
you may well hesitate to give it publicity if you 
find that it differs from the generally accepted 
views of mankind ; for there are more chances 
that the aggregate mind is right than that you 
alone have the new revelation. But once thor- 
oughly convinced of the rightfulness of your 
course and the righteousness of your cause, you 
should never hesitate because of the effects of 
either discovery or announcement. Seek the 
truth, therefore, remembering that it is to be 
your own and must be your own when you find 
it ; for it is the truth in all things that is to make 
you free in all things. He who is a slave is not 
responsible even for his own existence. Held in 
bondage, he loses all sense of responsibility, be- 
cause another cares for him. Only the man who 
feels thoroughly and sincerely and earnestly the 
value and power of individual life can appreciate 



A Few Last Words 189 

the blessings of freedom and the vast responsibil- 
ity that freedom brings him. No man may speak 
for you. You must always carry the burden of 
your own shortcomings. 

And you must prepare for pain such as you 
have not experienced before, because the hardest 
thing on earth is to move and to grow. I am 
very sure that you do not care to be a human 
flint which never by any accident is to strike fire. 
It is very easy to move through the world by 
twisting and turning to avoid conflict with 
others ; but it is a very difficult thing to go 
through the world bent upon the conquest of 
yourself, and of the territory that belongs to you 
by your own right. It is a great deal easier to 
go with the crowd ; it is always difficult to under- 
stand that God and one make a majority. You 
can sit still without trouble or distress of mind, 
and activity is very often painful ; but, like the 
growing pains of your youth, it simply indicates 
that there is larger stature in store for you. 
When a tree breaks its bark, you know that it 
has had a prosperous year. Do not do that 
which is easiest and which is surest to bring you 
momentary applause : that is, agree with those 



190 The College Student and His Problems 

about you even though you doubt the truth of 
their conclusions. With all humility but with- 
out flinching, accept the responsibility of your 
own thoughts, your own conclusions, your own 
actions, your own life : and find in this very ac- 
ceptance a most magnificent reward. Never for a 
moment fancy that he is the brightest and quick- 
est who is always at variance with some one, or 
with society, or with the settled order of things ; 
but humbly, and thoughtfully, and painfully if 
need be, go about your own work in your own 
way : thankful for a day and an age in which the 
individual is appreciated, in which all your facul- 
ties and powers may have full sway, in which you 
can think and speak and live for yourself. 

It is not all truth, but the truth, your truth, 
the truth you have learned by patient effort, the 
truth which you are ready to hold against all 
comers, the truth which has won your devotion 
for its own dear sake, — this is the truth which 
makes life worth the living and which makes you 
free. " And to be free," said John Milton, " to 
be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be 
wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and 
abstinent, to be magnanimous and brave." 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



EXPENSES 

It has been suggested that a statement of the ac- 
tual cost of attending different colleges be added to 
this volume. This statement must not be taken as 
the main factor in determining your choice of a col- 
lege, but is for your information only; although it 
cannot be denied that the necessary expenses of a 
college course will sometimes determine the choice. 

Nearly every worthy institution, certainly every 
institution of note, now offers fellowships or scholar- 
ships, or both. Fellowships are granted to graduate 
students, and carry with them from two hundred 
dollars to six hundred dollars a year. Scholarships 
are granted to undergraduates, and carry part or all 
of the tuition — rarely more. The conditions under 
which these grants are made are set forth in the cata- 
logues or other printed information of the different 
institutions. 

In many educational institutions there is a fund 
known as the "Assistance Fund," or by an older and 
less favored title, "The Indigent Student Fund." 

o 193 



194 The College Student and His Problems 

From this fund certain advances are made to aid 
worthy students ; but these advances are rarely made 
except to regularly enrolled students who have proved 
their merit. There is a tendency nowadays to turn 
these grants into loans, and thus make the Assistance 
Fund recurring, or self-maintaining. Whether this 
requirement is made or not, no self-respecting student 
will avail himself of assistance in this way without 
repaying it, with reasonable interest, at the earliest 
possible moment. 

At most institutions there are ways in which stu- 
dents may earn more or less money while carrying 
their regular college work. A student who can bring 
to the community in which the college is located some 
skill in some given direction is quite sure of employ- 
ment. Many institutions have special committees to 
assist students in securing employment. The larger 
the town in which the college or university is situ- 
ated, the greater the opportunity for work of this 
kind. Evening work or part-time work in such lines 
as stenography, typewriting, canvassing, collecting, 
office work of various kinds, drafting, illustrating, 
newspaper work, and private tutoring; and work in 
and about private houses, such as the care of a furnace, 
the care of a horse, the care of the lawn or grounds, — 
is quite readily found for students who are expert and 
industrious and faithful, and willing to do whatever 
may be assigned them. Most institutions, however, 



Appendix 195 

find it impossible to promise such work in advance ; 
and it may be taken as a settled and safe rule that, 
with rare exceptions, no student should undertake to 
attend college unless he has sufB.cient resources to 
carry him safely through at least a half year. By 
that time he will be acquainted with the faculty and 
with the town and the general situation, and officers 
and citizens will come to know something about him; 
and it is not a difficult task to secure some helpful 
recognition. Prom the very nature of things, it is 
very much more difficult to find opportunities for 
young women to work in this way than for young 
men. 

In the statements which follow, the tuition fees and 
other fixed charges by the institution are for the 
general courses only. In technical and professional 
courses the fees are generally somewhat higher, and 
laboratory expenses are somewhat greater. 

The laboratory fees are estimated, because it is im- 
possible to determine these with exactness until the 
course is chosen. A course which carries science in a 
rather left-handed manner, and in which history, phi- 
losophy, economics, the literatures, and the classics 
are given preference, will call for comparatively slight 
expenditure for laboratory work. Scientific courses 
call for much more. 

The statement which follows cannot be treated as a 
comparative statement, as far as living expenses are 



196 The College Student and His Problems 

concerned, since some of the estimates are for forty 
weeks in the academic year and some are for thirty- 
six weeks. Moreover, a minor expenditure in a small 
town will often bring greater comfort than the greater 
expenditure in a city. Each statement, therefore, 
must stand by itself, and the conditions under which 
life at the institution goes forward must be carefully 
considered. 



Institutions 


PeesI 


EOOM 

Kent 


BOAKD 


Board 

AND EOOM 


Total' 




$ 


$ 


$ 


$ 


$ 


Amherst . . . 


125 


42-78* 


108-216 


. . 


275-419 


Beloit .... 


70 


20-75* 


72-144 




162-289 


Brown .... 


165 


25-60-1252 


100-150-280 


. . 


290-575-570 


California State 


No 










University . . 


Tuition 


• • 


• • 


• • 


"Need not ex- 
ceed 300." 


Colorado State 












University . . 


25 






12&-200-300 


150-225-325 


Columbia Uni- 












versity . . . 






. . 


. . 


387-547-829 up.B 


Cornell (Iowa) . 


27-45 


. . 




78-165 


105-210 


CorneU(N.Y.) . 


100 




, . 


150-400 


250-500 


Dartmouth . . 


112-120 


15-1002 


111-185 


. . 


238-405 


Grinnell (Iowa) . 


73 


30-60* 


100-120 


. . 


203-253 


Harvard . . . 


175 


51-155-295* 


117-160-390 


. . 


343^90-860 up. 


Illinois State Uni- 












versity . . . 


247 


33-65* 


90-126 


144-216 


147-215-258-366 


Johns Hopkins . 


185 




. . 


216-360 


401-545 


Leland Stanford 












University . . 










"Exclusive of 
clothing and 
railway fares 
225-300." 


Michigan State 












University . . 


50-55 « 


_ 


. . 


120-160-200 


"Average, 370." 


Minnesota State 












University . . 




• • 


• • 


. . 


268-305-3156 



Appendix 



197 



Institutions 


Fees 


EooM 
Eent 


BOAKD 


Board 

AND EoOM 


Total 


Nebraska State 


$ 


$ 


$ 


$ 


$ 


University . , 


. . 




. . 




"Average, 250." 


N. Carolina State 












University . . 


85 


. . 




180-415 


265-500 


Ohio State Uni- 












versity . . . 


30-35-70 


5-37-752 


70-110-150 


. . 


105-182-295 


Ohio Wesleyan . 


57 


20-35-50 < 


70-90-140 


. . 


147-182-247 


Princeton . . . 


165 


40-90-2302 


108-180-252 




313-435-647 


Sewanee . . . 


125 


. . 




150-200 


275-325 


Texas State Uni- 












versity . . . 


25 


. . 


. . 


108-180 


150-225 


Union Univer- 












sity .... 


115 


18-36 


120-160 


• • 


253-311. "Aver- 
age, 280." 


University of 












Chicago . . . 


125 


60-105-1254 


90-126-225 




275-356-475 


University of 












Pennsylvania . 


17^225 


. . 


. . 


185-250 


360^75 


Washington Uni- 












versity . . . 


150 


. . 


. 


200-300 


350-450 


(St. Louis). 












Western Eeserve 


110 


. . 




120-200 


230-310 


Williams . . . 


130 


16-1302 


126-216 


. . 


272-476 


Wisconsin State 












University . . 


50-65 




. . 


200-400 


250-465 


Yale 


175 


45-145-2154 


125-175-250 




350-495-640 



1 Including tuition fees, laboratory fees (estimated), and other 
fixed institutional charges. 

2 Unfurnished room, including fuel and lights. 

8 Estimates do not include washing, laundry, incidentals, text- 
books, travelling or vacation expenses; except where quoted direct 
from catalogues. 

4 Furnished rooms ; two students in a room. 

6 Special reports of all expenses, by " typical students." 

6 For non-resident, $10 more. 

7 Laboratory fees not included. 



The Meaning of Education 

WITH OTHER ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 

BY 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

Columbia University 

Cloth. i2mo. $i.oo 

HAMILTON W. MABIE 

"I do not recall any recent discussion of educational 
questions which has seemed to me so adequate in knowl- 
edge and so full of genuine insight. I like the frankness, 
the honesty, and the courage of the papers immensely." 

state Supt. CHARLES R. SKINNER, Albany, N. Y. 

" A volume which will be eagerly sought and thoroughly 
enjoyed. It is clear, strong, and wholesome." 

REVIEW OF REVIEWS 

" We are sure that the teachers of the country will be glad 
to have these articles and addresses brought together in a 
single volume. On all that pertains to the science of edu- 
cation, no writer more readily commands assent than Dr. 
Butler." 

DETROIT FREE PRESS 

"Dr. Butler's unfoldment of his views and theories is 
marked by clearness of statement, a lucid style, and deep 
thoughtfulness and logic. The book is suggestive and 
inspiring." 

THE SENTINEL (Milwaukee) 

" Professor Butler's book is rife with ideas and suggestions 
which will render it valuable to all thoughtful people, and 
these are lucidly presented and urged in a most persuasive 
way." 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



Source Book of the History of 
Education 

FOR THE GREEK AND ROMAN PERIOD 

By PAUL MOimOE, Ph.D. 

Adjunct Professor of the History of Education, Teachers 
College, Columbia University 

A^ii/ch. i2ino. $2.25, net 

The aim of this work is to put in the hands of students in a convenient 
form the sources in the history of education for the classical period. These 
sources are so scattered that it is impossible for the student to have access 
to them away from a large library, and even with such advantage it is not 
possible for a class to use such sources, scattered as they are through so 
many volumes. The need for such a volume is the greater from the fact 
that few of the existing histories of education in English are written from the 
sources, and those few are not ordinarily used by the students, being limited 
as they are to special periods. The aim of the author is to furnish the 
student with the most accurate sources of information, and to connect such 
fragments with a very brief discussion that will form a complete narrative 
and will indicate the value and the principles of interpretation of the sources. 

The plan of the book is as follows : Selections are made from the vari- 
ous Greek and Roman authors relating to the school life and educational 
ideas and practices of the various periods of classical history. Thus the 
following topics are illustrated : 

Spartan education, by a selection from Plutarch's Lycurgus ; Old Athe- 
nian Education, by selections from Thucydides and from Plato's dialogues ; 
the work of the Sophists and the opposition between the old and the new 
Greek education, by selections from Plato's dialogues, from Isocrates and 
from the Clouds of Aristophanes ; the later Greek education, by selections 
from Plutarch's essays ; the Greek theory and philosophy of education is 
represented by selections from the Republic and the Laws of Plato, Xeno- 
phon's Cyropedia and the Politics of Aristotle. In the Roman period the 
contrast between the old Roman and the Graeco-Roman education is given 
by the selections from Tacitus, Pliny, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Sue- 
tonius, and many brief passages from various authors. The Graeco-Roman 
education is fully described in selections from Quintilian and Cicero. These 
selections will include almost all the passages to be .bund in classical litera- 
ture bearing directly on the subject of education and school life, and are full 
enough to give as complete and exact knowledge of those subjects as is 
possible now to obtain without exhaustive study. 



C 8 84^ 

^ S# ^# "r PUBLI 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



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